THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 
OF  CALIFORNIA 

BEQUEST 

OF 
ANITA  D.  S.  BLAKE 


v>    ,     ^ 


W— 


THE    GREAT   WORD 


THE 

GREAT   WORD 

BY 

HAMILTON    WRIGHT 
MABIE 


Think,  when  our  one  soul  understands 

The  great  Word  which  makes  all  things  new, 

When  earth  breaks  up  and  heaven  expands, 
How  will  the  change  strike  me  and  you 

In  the  house  not  made  with  hands  ? 

ROBERT  BROWNING. 


NEW   YORK 

DODD,    MEAD   &   COMPANY 
1905 


Copyright,  IQOI,  1904,  1905, 
BY  THE  OUTLOOK  Co. 

Copyright,  1905, 
BY  DODD,  MEAD  AND  COMPANY. 


Published  September,  1905 


GIFT 


THE    UNIVERSITY    PRESS,    CAMBRIDGE,    U.S.A. 


HI4 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER  PAGE 

I.  THE   MYSTERY  PLAY  ....  7 

II.  THE  BIRTH  OF  LOVE  ....  16 

III.  INFINITY,  IMMORTALITY,  AND  LOVE  25 

IV.  THE  VISION  OF  THE  IMMORTAL     .  33 
V.  THE  GREAT  ADVENTURE    ...  41 

VI.  THE   MYSTERY  OF  PERSONALITY  .  50 

VII.  LOVE  AND  WORK 60 

VIII.  THE  APPEAL  OF  LOVE  ....  68 

IX.  THE  SILENCES  OF  LOVE       ...  76 

X.  DAY  UNTO  DAY  UTTERETH  SPEECH  88 

XI.  LOVE'S  SECOND  SIGHT  ....  97 

XII.  THE  STEEP  ASCENT      .      .      .      .  106 

XIII.  THE  CREDIBILITY  OF  LOVE      .      .  116 

XIV.  THE  ULTIMATE  COMPANIONSHIP  127 

XV.  THE  PROPHECY  OF  LOVE    .      .      .  136 


513 


Contents 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

XVI.  THE  INTIMATIONS  OF  LOVE  .      .  144 

XVII.  THE  ART  OF  LOVE    .      .      .      .  153 

XVIII.  LOVE  AND  LAW     .....  164 

XIX.  THE  INFINITE  IN  THE  FINITE      .  174 

XX.  THE  EXPECTATION  OF  LOVE        .  1 84 

XXI.  THE  HIGHEST  SERVICE  OF  LOVE  192 


VI 


CHAPTER   I 

THE    MYSTERY    PLAY 

TN  the  beginning  there  was  Light; 
a  torch  held  aloft  that  the  form 
and  shape  of  things  might  be  seen, 
and  their  uses  ;  and  in  the  first  bright 
ness,  filling  the  void,  the  slow,  sublime 
stirring  of  the  seeds  of  which  worlds 
were  to  be  the  fruit ;  the  silent  order 
ing  of  stars  in  their  places,  and  the 
unrolling  of  the  curtain  of  night  shut 
ting  out  the  splendour  of  the  day  and 
making  a  quiet  space  of  darkness  for 
the  coming  of  the  stars.  So  the  stage 
was  set  for  the  drama  of  life  and  for 
the  man  and  woman  who  were  to  play 
it ;  sometimes  turning  all  its  rich  hu 
mours  into  sparkling  comedy ;  some- 
7 


The  Great  Word 

times  rendering  all  its  myriad  shades 
of  feeling  in  a  monotony  of  weariness 
and  disillusion ;  sometimes  driving 
all  its  tremendous  forces  tumultu- 
ously  on  to  tragic  ends.  A  little  time 
of  learning  the  mysteries  of  the  stage; 
a  little  time  of  learning  how  to  play 
one's  part;  a  little  time  of  action, 
great  or  small ;  a  little  time  for  mem 
ory  ;  and  then  other  actors,  a  new 
audience,  and  silence  ! 

Meantime  the  stage  remains  vast 
beyond  the  reach  of  thought,  majes 
tic  or  beautiful  beyond  the  touch  of 
art;  itself  part  of  the  drama  which  in 
continuous  acts  is  played  by  vanish 
ing  generations  of  actors  to  the  slow, 
sad  rnusic  of  mortality.  They  come 
and  go,  the  men  and  women  who 
wear  the  masks  of  comedy  or  tragedy, 
whose  breath  sounds  the  music  or 
discord  of  speech  in  manifold  tones 
8 


The   Mystery  Play 

and  words;  but  the  clouds  that  cur 
tain  the  stage,  and  the  hills  that  form 
its  background,  and  the  glitter  of  stars 
that  light  it  keep  their  ancient  form, 
and  their  ancient  silence  remains  in 
violate. 

Is  it  but  a  moving  show  of  vanish 
ing  figures,  this  mystery  play  of  life, 
or  has  it  some  strange,  sweet  mean 
ing,  full  of  pathos  and  beauty,  spoken 
in  a  hundred  languages  from  one  deep 
heart?  Every  actor  has  his  own 
speech,  but  there  is  something  held 
in  common  which  interprets  every 
man's  language  to  his  fellow.  There 
are  myriad  differences  of  expression, 
but  there  is  one  great  experience 
through  which  all  are  passing  and 
which  each  strives  to  understand  and 
to  put  into  words.  Every  man  plays 
what  pleases  him,  for  they  who  think 
their  parts  are  set  for  them  do  not 
9 


The  Great  Word 

see  how  voice,  gesture,  and  bearing 
conspire  to  commit  them  to  the  roles 
they  take.  From  out  the  vast  range 
of  parts  each  man  elects  his  part  and 
plays  it  well  or  ill  as  pleases  him,  and 
always  with  the  haunting  conscious 
ness  that  the  play  is  at  bottom  an 
eternal  reality  and  that  what  he  seems 
to  be  he  is;  that  the  players  speak 
their  lines  and  go  off  the  stage  and 
are,  for  the  most  part,  speedily  for 
gotten  ;  but  that  somehow,  some 
where  on  another  stage,  the  play  goes 
on  and  each  man  takes  the  part  which 
he  has  chosen  and  becomes  at  last 
that  which  he  would  be.  The  stage 
is  never  without  the  witness  of  this 
haunting  consciousness  of  reality,  this 
sense  of  something  permanent  behind 
the  shifting  scenes,  this  prevision  of 
hidden  relation  between  the  man  and 
the  part  he  plays ;  and  of  a  deeper  and 

10 


The  Mystery  Play 

more  mysterious  drama,  not  under 
stood,  in  which  each  has  his  place  and 
into  which  all  parts  are  fitted  at  last. 

There  are  hours  when  the  play 
seems  very  noble  and  majestic  and  the 
lines  have  a  stately  cadence,  full  of  in 
timations  of  something  divine  slowly 
and  sublimely  speaking  through 
words  of  human  making;  there  are 
other  hours  when  the  play  sinks  to 
the  level  of  low  comedy  and  of  coarse 
farce;  and  there  are  still  other  times 
when  the  stage  echoes  to  "mere  sound 
and  fury,  signifying  nothing;'*  and 
yet  in  farce,  comedy,  and  tragedy  some 
note  is  always  sounded  from  beyond 
the  bounds  of  the  action,  and  in  the 
most  frivolous  moment  the  piece  sud 
denly  turns  to  tragedy. 

There  are  countless  books  of  the 
play,  each  with  its  own  account  of  the 
plot  and  the  parts,  its  description  of 


ii 


The  Great  Word 

the  stage  and  the  scenes,  its  story  of 
the  making  of  the  drama;  and  he  who 
reads  finds  some  truth  in  each,  some 
insight  into  the  meaning  of  the  acts, 
some  hint  concerning  the  shaping  and 
movements  of  the  parts;  but  nowhere 
is  the  mystery  of  the  play  dispelled, 
nowhere  is  its  ultimate  issue  revealed. 

Clouds  and  darkness,  the  rush  of 
storms  among  the  hills,  the  roar  of 
tossing  seas,  the  tumult  of  conflicting 
winds,  envelop  the  stage  or  roll  their 
deep  tones  over  it;  and  are  them 
selves  part  of  the  mystery.  The  cur 
tain  rises  and  falls  continually ;  there 
are  laughter,  outcries,  tears,  passionate 
tones  wild  with  anguish,  voices  sweet 
with  all  peace,  thunders  of  applause ; 
but  the  final  scene  is  never  disclosed, 
the  curtain  is  never  rung  up  on  the 
last  act. 

The  actors  in  this  mystery  play  are 

12 


The   Mystery  Play 

always  two:  the  man  and  the  woman. 
Each  plays  many  parts,  there  are 
countless  roles,  and  manifold  plots 
run  side  by  side  or  merge  in  one  dra 
matic  climax.  There  are  moments 
when  these  two  vanish  from  the  stage 
or  are  lost  in  the  masks  they  wear; 
and  the  stage  is  given  over  to  fighters, 
leaders,  thinkers,  scholars,  masters  of 
affairs,  seekers  after  truth,  fame,  ad 
venture,  fortune ;  but  always  at  the 
heart  of  the  play  and  investing  it  with 
a  meaning  deeper  than  all  vocations 
are  the  man  and  the  woman,  the  only 
original  forces  on  the  stage  ;  in  whose 
natures,  not  in  whose  vocations,  are 
the  roots  of  the  comedy  and  the  trag 
edy.  They  wear  a  thousand  masks 
and  are  disguised  by  fashions  beyond 
number ;  but  no  thrill  comes,  there 
is  no  stir  of  imagination,  no  hint  of 
the  vaster  drama,  until  the  heart  of 


The  Great  Word 

the  man  and  the  woman  suddenly 
charge  with  elemental  power  the  vari 
ous  speech  they  use,  and  through  all 
disguises  the  original  personality  is 
disclosed.  A  thousand  times  the  play 
runs  out  in  minor  parts  and  subordi 
nate  plots  and  takes  on  the  monotony 
of  mere  function  and  form  and  task  ; 
and  then  suddenly,  behold,  the  man 
and  woman  emerge  again  and  the 
lines  flash  with  contending  humours  or 
turn  to  poetry  or  sink  to  the  deepest 
levels  of  tragedy.  Vocations,  occu 
pations,  uses  domestic  and  public  of 
all  sorts,  places,  services,  careers,  are 
the  mere  dressing  of  the  parts ;  when 
the  word  is  spoken  which  "  leaps  im 
mortal  from  out  the  painted  pag 
eantry  "  it  is  the  voice  of  the  man 
and  woman  which  speaks.  They  hide 
behind  a  thousand  parts  and  are  con 
cerned  in  a  thousand  plots  and  wear 
14 


The  Mystery  Play 

disguises  as  various  as  their  tastes, 
their  interests,  their  ambitions ;  but 
the  interest  of  the  play  rests  ulti 
mately  and  solely  in  them,  not  in 
their  roles;  and  their  passions,  qual 
ities,  and  natures  are  the  stuff  of 
which  its  immortal  substance  is  wo 
ven.  The  deeper  their  differences  of 
temperament,  the  more  profound  and 
definite  the  difference  of  tempera 
ment  and  trait  between  them,  the 
richer  and  fuller  the  play  of  the  forces 
that  divide  them  the  one  from  the 
other,  the  more  will  they  bring  to 
the  mystery  play,  the  deeper  will  be 
its  interest,  the  more  expressive  its 
lines  of  the  ultimate  meanings  of 
life. 


CHAPTER    II 

THE    BIRTH    OF   LOVE 

TN  far-off  space  in  a  far-off  age  a 
god,  so  the  legend  runs,  was  mak 
ing  a  piece  of  earth  for  men  to  live 
on.  For  uncounted  centuries  he  had 
dreamed  of  the  hour  when  the  divine 
power  that  was  in  him  should  flow 
out  and  fashion  something  as  beau 
tiful  as  his  thoughts  ;  upon  which 
he  could  rest  his  eyes,  which  saw 
only  the  emptiness  of  space  ;  a  great 
reality  which  should  issue  from  him 
and  yet  be  no  longer  a  part  of  him  ; 
something  he  could  brood  over  and 
build  upon  ;  which  should  give  him 
the  joy  of  contrast  and  opposition, 
the  interest  of  responsibility,  the 
16 


The  Birth  of  Love 

delight  of  ownership.  For  this  god 
had  lived  for  innumerable  ages  in 
solitude,  in  the  pure  ether,  disturbed 
by  no  sound,  approached  by  no  swift 
or  halting  feet,  companioned  by  no 
fellow,  challenged  by  no  foe.  Re 
mote,  isolated,  encompassed  by  un 
speakable  sublimity  and  loneliness, 
in  the  heart  of  an  uncreated  uni 
verse,  he  had  meditated  and  dreamed 
through  seons  of  which  no  record 
remained ;  for  there  was  none  beside 
himself  to  keep  count  of  eternity; 
and  for  him,  because  there  was  no 
action,  there  was  no  memory. 

No  sun  made  his  day  glorious 
and  no  splendour  of  stars  lay  across 
the  heavens  at  night  like  the  trail 
of  a  vanished  day  ;  no  earth  swept 
through  space  amid  other  worlds  in 
rhythmic  harmony  of  motion  ;  no 
voices  of  men  rose  in  appeal  and  no 
2  17 


The  Great  Word 

voices  of  women  in  praise  and  prayer  ; 
and  the  silence  was  unbroken  by 
any  cry  of  children  from  bound  to 
bound.  Through  all  the  vast  range 
and  stretch  of  space  the  stillness  of 
an  unborn  universe  reigned,  and  the 
solitude  was  as  vast  and  awful  as  the 
unsown  fields  of  space  which  it  en 
compassed.  The  god  was  silent  and 
motionless  in  the  heart  of  the  still 
ness  ;  for  he  was  in  a  dream  full  of 
divine  visions  of  the  things  that 
were  to  be.  As  yet  he  knew  not 
himself,  nor  had  any  true  sense  of 
his  power  come  to  him.  All  things 
were  within  his  reach,  but  he  had 
never  put  forth  his  hand  to  take, 
to  build,  or  to  destroy.  He  had 
meditated  and  dreamed,  but  he  had 
never  acted,  and  the  joy  and  power 
and  fertility  of  divinity  were  not  his ; 
for  he  had  yet  to  live. 
18 


The  Birth  of  Love 

And  as  he  meditated  and  dreamed, 
the  solitude  became  more  appalling 
and  the  loneliness  more  unbearable, 
until  he  could  no  longer  bear  the 
burden  of  thought  without  action ; 
the  pain  of  repression,  of  power  un 
used,  of  a  nature  undeveloped,  of 
thought  without  speech,  was  too  great 
for  his  spirit,  and  through  his  divine 
nature  there  ran  the  tremors,  the  fore 
bodings,  the  premonitions  of  coming 
birth  ;  for  the  god  was  emerging  from 
the  shadows  of  dreams  and  stood  on 
the  verge  of  life,  and  all  its  tremen 
dous  possibilities  were  stirring  him. 
And  he  said  to  himself,  "  I  will  ease 
the  pain  of  thought  by  action.  I 
will  create  a  world. "  And  in  a  far- 
off  stretch  of  space  he  created  a 
world,  and  made  it  vast  and  majestic 
as  a  temple;  but  there  were  no  wor 
shippers  at  the  shrine,  and  still  the 
'9 


The  Great  Word 

loneliness  was  unbroken.  Then  he 
took  the  matter  of  which  the  world 
was  made,  and  sowed  it  deep  with 
the  seeds  of  beauty,  so  that  out  of 
its  hidden  recesses  exquisite  shapes 
arose,  and  the  air  was  sweet  with  the 
glances  and  the  breath  of  flowers ; 
and  the  god  gave  a  great  sigh  of 
content. 

But  still  silence  reigned,  and  the 
loneliness  of  the  new  earth  smote  the 
god  and  made  him  aware  afresh  of 
his  solitude  ;  for  there  was  no  one  to 
understand  his  work,  to  use  it  or  to 
be  grateful  for  it.  Then,  in  feverish 
haste,  the  god  made  men,  saying  to 
himself:  "They  surely  will  compre 
hend  and  companion  me."  And 
over  the  face  of  the  earth  men  ap 
peared  and  built  their  homes  and 
plied  their  trades  and  multiplied ; 
and  some  worshipped  and  some 
20 


The  Birth  of  Love 

cursed,  but  none  understood ;  and 
the  loneliness  of  the  god  was  deeper 
than  before  and  the  burden  of  it  was 
greater  than  he  could  bear.  He  had 
put  forth  his  power  and  created,  and 
the  earth  gave  him  back  his  thought 
in  a  beautiful  and  convincing  reality ; 
and  he  had  made  man,  and  man  saw 
something  of  the  wonder  in  which  he 
lived  and  built  shrines  to  the  invisible 
maker  of  it ;  but  no  one  shared  the 
thoughts  and  burdens  of  the  god,  nor 
did  any  voice  speak  his  language. 
The  power  in  him  had  gone  forth 
and  realised  itself  in  creative  activity, 
but  the  heart  in  him  remained  silent 
and  was  hid  in  mystery,  so  that  he 
understood  not  himself  nor  divined 
where  his  divinity  lay. 

Then  on  a  radiant  morning — so 
the  legend  runs  —  a  goddess  saw  the 
world,  that  it  was  fair  and  sweet  in 

21 


The  Great  Word 

the  light ;  and,  being  as  yet  unvexed 
with  emotion  and  untroubled  with 
the  deep  things  of  the  divine  life,  she 
passed  through  space,  and  set  her 
foot  on  the  edges  of  the  earth,  and 
ran  swiftly  through  a  great  wood, 
and  came  upon  a  wide  meadow  in 
which  flowers  gleamed  as  the  stars  in 
heaven,  and  the  air  was  full  of  the 
breath  of  budding  things  and  of  the 
desire  for  life  stirring  in  the  roots  of 
the  earth.  And  through  the  veins 
of  the  goddess  there  ran  a  tremor  as 
if  some  divine  event  were  at  hand, 
and  her  heart  was  swept  like  a  sea 
that  is  lifted  in  surges,  and  the  soul 
in  her  seemed  to  struggle  for  space 
and  light  and  air;  for  her  whole 
nature  was  swept  toward  blossoming 
and  fruitful  ness. 

And  when  she  lifted  her  eyes  in 
that  mysterious  and  wonderful  mo- 

22 


The  Birth  of  Love 

ment  of  her  birth  into  conscious 
divinity,  the  eyes  of  the  god  were 
looking  into  hers ;  and  they  both 
saw  and  understood  and  were  as  one 
in  the  rapture  and  revelation  of  the 
spring  morning  in  the  fertile  earth. 
For  the  heart  of  the  god  went  out  of 
him  into  the  keeping  of  the  goddess, 
and  his  sleeping  spirit  awoke  in  the 
morning  light  of  love,  and  he  lived  at 
last  after  all  those  centuries  of  lone 
liness.  For  not  even  the  gods  live 
until  they  put  forth  their  power,  and 
the  divine  in  gods  and  men  is  realised 
only  when  the  heart  pours  forth  its 
sweetness,  surrenders  itself  in  order 
to  find  itself;  and  the  spirit  comes  to 
self-knowledge  and  the  fulness  of 
life  only  when  it  meets  its  fellow 
and  the  two  are  made  one  in  that 
lavish  giving  of  self  which  is  self-  ' 
realisation,  and  in  that  fellowship 
23 


The  Great  Word 

and  comprehension  which  are  perfect 
self-expression.  For  life  fulfils  itself 
in  love,  and  in  loving  becomes  divine 
and  immortal. 


24 


CHAPTER   III 

INFINITY,    IMMORTALITY,    AND 
LOVE 

AND  then,  so  the  legend  runs,  these 
immortal  lovers  found  not  only 
the  secret  of  joy  but  of  life.  Through 
uncounted  ages  they  had  thought 
about  life,  probed  it,  searched  it,  pen 
etrated  it  by  a  thousand  paths ;  now, 
at  last,  they  lived.  The  slumbering 
divinity  within  them  awoke ;  they 
were  enveloped  in  a  flood  of  light; 
all  manner  of  half-understood  things 
became  clear;  up  from  the  depths  of 
being  countless  springs  gushed  forth 
and  fertilised  them ;  and  with  a  pas 
sion  of  energy,  born  of  their  swift 
25 


The  Great  Word 

discernment  of  the  unfulfilled  power 
hidden  in  their  souls,  they  poured 
out  their  creative  power  like  a  flood. 
Through  all  the  secret  places  of  their 
spirit  swept  the  imperious  impulse  to 
surrender,  to  give  the  divinest  that 
was  in  them.  Their  happiness  radi 
ated  like  the  benignant  glow  of  a  flame 
vast  enough  to  warm  the  world.  It 
searched  and  lighted  every  hidden  and 
secret  place ;  it  sank  into  the  earth, 
and  sent  a  thrill  through  the  roots  of 
things  great  and  small  concealed  in  the 
darkness ;  it  filled  the  air  as  with  a 
finer  ether,  and  the  breath  of  it  became 
a  caress  that  drew  every  delicate  and 
beautiful  thing  out  of  its  hiding ;  and 
through  the  stars  it  shone  with  a  soft 
and  kindling  radiance  as  if  the  beauty 
of  the  invisible  heavens  had  passed 
into  the  arching  sky. 

But  it  was  not  alone  the  silent  fil-- 
26 


Infinity,  Immortality,  and  Love 

tration  of  the  divine  nature  that  set 
all  the  pulses  of  life  and  joy  beating 
in  the  new  earth ;  it  was  also  the 
shaping  thought  seeking  in  every 
man  the  sources  of  life  that  it  might 
fill  them,  and  the  passionate  love 
eager  to  share  with  all  the  fulfilment 
and  function  of  the  divine  nature  come 
at  last  to  a  knowledge  of  itself  and  to 
the  possession  of  its  own. 

The  lovers  went  about  the  earth, 
and  as  they  passed  the  world  grew 
beautiful  about  them,  and  that  which 
lay  in  their  hearts  formed  a  language 
for  itself  in  the  colour  of  flowers  and 
the  songs  of  birds,  in  voices  soft  with 
all  gentleness  and  rich  with  all  the 
deeper  meanings  of  things,  in  fields 
which  overflowed  with  fertility  and 
flung  waves  of  grain  to  the  very  edges 
of  the  woods  and  far  up  the  mountain 
sides,  in  forests  which  spread  their  vast 
27 


The  Great  Word 

foliage  like  a  protecting  shield  over 
brooks  vocal  with  the  peace  of  undis 
covered  springs  and  pure  with  the 
innocence  of  virgin  depths  of  shade. 

As  they  passed,  the  lovers  looked 
at  men  and  found  them  burdened  with 
care  and  bent  under  toil  and  encom 
passed  with  strange  fears ;  and  they 
gave  them  strength  for  labour,  and 
security  from  anxiety,  and  peace  amid 
their  struggles ;  and  men  became  as 
happy  children  whom  the  gods  shielded 
from  all  harm  and  protected  from  all 
danger ;  but  as  yet  they  knew  not  they 
were  men,  with  the  joys  and  the  an 
guish  and  the  bliss  of  love. 

And  when  the  lovers  saw  how  fair 
the  world  was,  and  how  abundant  were 
its  harvests,  and  how  sweet  was  the  lot 
of  man  without  thought  of  the  morrow 
or  the  poignant  bliss  of  the  stirring  of 
the  soul  within  them,  they  were  con- 
28 


Infinity,  Immortality,  and  Love 

tent  and  rested  from  their  labours ;  and 
the  blossoming  world  was  a  bower  of 
delight  to  them.  And  the  years  passed 
like  a  shadow  over  the  face  of  the  sun, 
and  men  had  no  history ;  for  they  were 
children  of  the  day  and  knew  not  the 
vastness  and  mystery  that  enfolded 
them.  And  still  love  grew  deeper  and 
more  tender  between  the  immortals, 
and  they  had  no  speech  for  it;  and  their 
happiness,  which  stirred  the  earth  with 
flooding  life, and  poured  light  through 
the  wide  arch  of  heaven,  had  no  echo 
in  the  souls  of  men.  Then  the  long 
ing  for  speech  became  a  pain  to  the 
lovers,  and  they  knew  that  something 
was  held  back  which  might  be  given; 
that  something  of  the  divine  power 
within  remained  still  to  be  put  forth 
in  order  that  men  might  understand 
and  in  understanding  become  akin  with 
themselves;  for  a  zone  of  silence  lay 
29 


The  Great  Word 

between  the  immortals  and  the  happy 
children  whom  they  had  created. 

So  on  a  radiant  morning  they 
touched  the  spirits  of  men  with  a 
new  power  of  comprehension,  and 
love  entered  into  the  hearts  of  all  that 
bore  the  human  image  ;  and  suddenly 
the  universe  swept  into  view,  and 
men  knew  that  they  were  the  children 
of  the  gods ;  for  within  the  mortal 
mind,  as  in  a  richly  carven  lamp,  the 
light  of  the  divine  shone  forth  and 
men  looked  into  one  another's  faces 
and  understood  whence  they  had 
come  and  whither  they  were  going, 
and  the  awe  and  wonder  of  it  fell  on 
their  souls.  The  lovers  knew  also 
that  love  alone  had  been  lacking,  and 
that  with  the  gift  of  love  there  had 
come  to  men  the  knowledge  of 
infinity  and  immortality  ;  so  that 
they  had  power  at  last  to  enter  into 
30 


Infinity,  Immortality,  and  Love 

fellowship  with  the  immortal  lovers 
who  had  builded  the  earth  and  made 
it  a  garden  of  delight  to  the  eye. 
For  there  is  no  word  for  infinity  and 
immortality  in  any  language,  divine 
or  human,  save  the  word  love ;  for 
nothing  save  love  has  compass 
enough  to  hold  and  to  express  the 
life  of  the  gods.  For  its  fulfilment 
love  needs  the  limitless  range  of 
eternity  and  the  boundless  vastness 
of  infinity.  Amid  the  things  that 
perish  it  knows  itself  imperishable, 
and  in  a  world  of  limitation  it  knows 
that  it  is  illimitable.  As  it  pours 
itself  out  in  utter  surrender  it  fills 
the  springs  that  it  may  have  more  to 
bestow  ;  as  it  passes  over  the  bounds 
which  confine  and  baffle  it,  the  ardour 
for  a  vaster  range  of  life  and  speech 
and  action  lifts  it  on  stronger  wings 
for  a  farther  flight.  Alone  in  a 
31 


The  Great  Word 

perishing  earth  it  abides,  untouched 
by  time  and  change  and  decay  ;  alone 
in  a  life  of  limitation  it  knows  that  it 
is  free  to  compass  all  things,  to  sur 
vive  all  mutation,  and  to  escape  death 
by  the  power  of  its  immortality. 


CHAPTER   IV 

THE   VISION    OF  THE   IMMORTAL 

r|~1HE  dramatists  and  novelists  have 
often  vividly  conceived  of  love 
as  a  sudden  and  overpowering  pas 
sion,  a  kind  of  divine  possession  of 
the  senses  and  the  emotions,  an  in 
stantaneous  blooming  of  all  the  finer 
hidden  resources  of  the  nature.  The 
earth  is  cold  and  bare ;  not  a  green 
thing  shows  itself  anywhere ;  sud 
denly,  without  a  note  of  warning, 
the  sun  rests  on  the  soil,  and,  behold  ! 
out  of  the  depths  there  blooms  a 
flower  of  ravishing  beauty.  In  Dush- 
yanta,  in  Romeo,  in  Richard  Feverel, 
who  may  stand  for  the  countless 
multitude  of  lovers  since  time  began, 
3  33 


The  Great  Word 

this  miracle  is  wrought  with  such 
swiftness  that  in  an  instant  all  the 
vagrant  impulses  flow  tumultuously 
to  one  end,  all  the  forces  of  passion, 
emotion,  will,  move  harmoniously  to 
one  goal,  the  whole  nature,  with  its 
secret  wealth  of  resources,  emerges 
into  the  light,  and  becomes  luminous 
with  aspiration,  devotion,  adoration. 
There  is,  in  all  the  range  of  vital 
expression,  nothing  more  appealing 
and  divinely  suggestive  of  the  ulti 
mate  capacities  of  the  soul  for  com 
panionship  and  comprehension  than 
these  sudden  unclosings  of  the  eyes 
to  the  vision  of  the  loveliness  of  the 
soul,  these  sudden  surrenders  to  the 
revelation  of  the  immortal  affinities 
of  spirit  with  spirit. 

Like  the  Days  in  Emerson's  poem, 
we    are    all  masked    in   this    strange 
journey  of  life;  our    immortality  is 
34 


The  Vision  of  the  Immortal 

hidden  by  all  manner  of  garments  of 
mortality,  and  we  move  along  the 
highway  like  perishing  apparitions. 
The  stars  from  their  serene  heights 
seem  to  look  down  pitifully  on  our 
weary  marches,  although  we  name 
and  measure  and  weigh  them ;  the 
earth,  which  is  to  call  us  to  itself  in 
the  end,  seems  to  smile  on  our  few 
and  broken  years,  although  we  master 
its  forces  and  comprehend  its  uses 
and  make  scales  strong  enough  to 
weigh  its  mountains  and  delicate 
enough  to  weigh  its  dust.  And  we 
forget,  in  the  haste  of  our  journey 
and  the  ever-thinning  ranks  of  those 
with  whom  we  move,  that  we  are  of 
royal  birth,  and  that  our  immortality 
is  only  partially  hidden  by  the  occu 
pations  and  possessions  with  which 
we  concern  ourselves. 

Then,  suddenly,  the  man  looks  up 
35 


The  Great  Word 

as  he  moves  in  the  ranks,  and  his 
eye  rests  on  the  woman,  and,  like 
a  flash  of  light  on  a  flower,  he  sees 
the  loveliness  of  her  spirit  behind 
the  mask  she  wears,  and  knows  that 
he  is  in  the  presence  of  immortality. 
Jt  is  this  sudden  recognition  of  spirit 
by  spirit  which  makes  the  eternal 
romance  of  life;  the  disclosure  that 
the  king  is  hidden  behind  the  work 
man's  garb,  and  the  queen  within  the 
peasant's  dress;  that  the  familiar  land 
scape  is  a  bit  of  fairyland,  and  the 
commonest  things  have  a  touch  of 
magic  on  them.  Dushyanta  is  hunt 
ing  in  the  woods  in  which  all  the 
Rajahs  have  hunted  before  him,  so 
that  if  there  were  a  race  memory 
every  tree  would  be  familiar  to  him 
and  every  passage  through  the  forest 
an  ancient  pathway ;  and  he  looks 
up  and  there  stands  Sakuntala,  and, 
36 


The  Vision  of  the  Immortal 

behold,  the  old  world  of  routine  and 
work  and  care  has  vanished,  and  a 
new  heaven  and  earth  have  descended 
wherein  dwelleth  beauty  alone ;  for 
the  immortal  has  suddenly  shone 
upon  him  from  out  the  obscurity 
of  the  mortal.  Romeo  wanders  care 
less  and  empty-hearted  among  mask 
ers,  and  suddenly,  like  a  star  rising 
splendid  above  the  horizon,  Juliet  is 
beside  him  and  his  life  is  at  the  flood, 
let  the  tide  carry  him  whither  it  may. 
On  the  sweet  summer  day  Richard 
Feverel  floats  down  the  quiet  English 
river  full  to  its  soft  and  fragrant 
edges,  wondering  in  his  heart  of 
youth  what  all  this  tender  beauty 
means,  and  there,  on  the  bank, 
stands  Lucy,  "at  the  founts  of  the 
world,**  all  the  passion  of  the  woman's 
soul  sleeping  in  her  eyes :  "  The 
little  skylark  went  up  above  her, 
37 


The  Great  Word 

all  song,  to  the  smooth  southern 
cloud  lying  along  the  blue ;  from  a 
dewy  copse  standing  dark  over  her 
nodding  hat  the  blackbird  fluted, 
calling  to  her  with  thrice  mellow 
note ;  the  kingfisher  flashed  emerald 
out  of  green  osiers ;  a  bow-winged 
heron  travelled  aloft, seeking  solitude; 
a  boat  slipped  toward  her  containing 
a  dreamy  youth  ; "  and  the  day  has 
found  its  meaning  and  the  landscape 
its  interpretation.  So,  to  the  most 
humble  as  to  the  children  of  genius 
come  the  inspirations  that  make  us 
aware  of  our  immortality. 

The  tragedy  of  love  is  the  fading 
of  the  vision,  the  slow,  sad  return  of 
the  common  day,  the  putting  on  of 
the  old  discarded  garments  of  mor 
tality  ;  the  triumph  of  love  is  the 
gradual,  complete,  convincing  revela 
tion  of  the  immortal  which  follows 

38 


The  Vision  of  the  Immortal 

the  first  blinding  disclosure  ;  the  full, 
sweet,  fruitful  ripening  after  the  glow 
and  intoxication  of  the  spring  morn 
ing.  Will  Ferdinand  still  find  his 
world  in  Miranda's  eyes  when  the 
island  has  dropped  below  the  horizon? 
will  Orlando  still  find  the  light  of 
life  in  Rosalind's  free  and  radiant 
nature  when  the  Forest  of  Arden 
has  become  like  a  mirage  in  the  far 
distance  ? 

The  artist  deals  with  all  manner 
of  crude  materials,  but  he  knows 
what  he  can  evoke  from  them,  and 
in  every  bit  of  the  material  in  his 
hand  he  discerns  the  immortal  poten 
cies  of  beauty.  The  lover,  who  is 
the  greatest  of  all  artists,  is  not  con 
fused  or  blinded  by  the  imperfections 
which  perfection  wears  in  this  world, 
nor  by  the  disguises  behind  which 
the  ultimate  and  supreme  tenderness 
39 


The  Great  Word 

hides  itself.  He  steadily  looks  at 
the  immortal  in  the  mortal  and  be 
lieves  and  waits  and  cherishes  ;  and  as 
the  years  go  by,  the  shyness  of  the 
soul  wears  off  in  the  presence  of  that 
devout  comprehension,  that  steady 
idealisation,  which  all  great  love  is, 
and  there  comes  at  last  the  most 
beautiful  of  all  visions  of  the  divine 
in  this  world  of  ours :  the  living 
together  in  immortal  fellowship  of 
two  human  spirits  surrounded  by 
change  and  decay  and  death,  but 
intrenched  beyond  their  reach  in 
imperishable  love. 


40 


CHAPTER   V 

THE    GREAT   ADVENTURE 

HPHERE  is  an  old  saying  which 
~  declares  that  it  is  the  unexpected 
that  always  happens.  This  phrase 
not  only  bears  the  inscription  of 
long  experience,  as  do  all  those 
proverbs  which  form  a  universal  cur 
rency  of  popular  wisdom  ;  it  is  also 
the  expression  of  an  instinct  deep 
in  the  hearts  of  men.  The  revolt  of 
the  aspiring  against  low  and  near 
aims,  of  the  imaginative  and  creative 
against  accepted  forms,  of  the  free 
hearted  and  free-minded  against  the 
pressure  of  conventions  that  cut  into 
the  soul,  are  the  perpetual  protest  of 
the  spirit  of  the  race  against  the  limi- 
41 


The  Great  Word 

tations  of  condition  and  circumstance, 
the  perpetual  affirmation  of  its  illim 
itable  possibilities  of  growth.  The 
vague  unrest  which  pervades  society 
in  its  most  comfortable  conditions  is 
significant,  not  of  sterile  restlessness, 
but  of  the  inability  of  men  with  ca 
pacity  for  the  infinite  to  rest  content 
with  the  best  the  finite  can  offer 
them.  In  all  the  range  of  experience 
nothing  quite  touches  the  height  of 
anticipation,  quite  fulfils  the  ultimate 
hope;  there  is  always  something  left 
in  the  heart  and  mind  which  is  not 
met  by  the  largest  and  happiest  suc 
cess.  To  the  sceptic  like  Renan 
and  to  the  believer  like  Browning 
the  world  in  its  most  enchanting 
hours  is  only  a  hospitable  inn,  from 
which  the  traveller  goes  with  the 
morning. 

The  biography  of  man  which  we 
42 


The  Great  Adventure 

call  history  is  a  great  story  of  ad 
venture  ;  in  unforeseen  happenings, 
in  the  sudden  gathering  of  perils,  in 
the  glorious  chances  of  fortune, 
the  "  Thousand  and  One  Nights," 
"  Monte  Cristo,"  and  "  The  Three 
Musketeers  "  are  faint  transcriptions 
of  the  pages  in  which  the  manifold 
adventures  of  the  race  are  written. 
Neither  in  their  own  natures  nor  in 
their  conditions  is  there  any  hope  of 
inaction  for  men  ;  the  inward  impulse 
and  the  outward  necessity  alike  com 
pel  the  taking  of  risks,  the  facing  of 
danger,  the  setting  of  the  face  toward 
the  undiscovered  country.  Over  the 
drowsiest  age  a  sudden  stir  of  hope 
or  fear  passes  like  a  breath  from  the 
sea,  and  once  more  the  burdens  are 
lifted  and  the  traveller  fares  on  in 
the  great  quest ;  in  the  seclusion  of 
gardens  of  delight,  on  the  silence  of 
43 


The  Great  Word 

the  golden  summer  afternoon,  a 
sudden  trumpet  peals,  and  there  is 
a  swift  buckling  on  of  armour  and 
a  pathetic  clamour  of  farewells. 

The  thirst  for  adventure  is  no  idle 
revolt  against  work  and  routine  and 
the  duties  of  the  hour  ;  it  is  the  im 
pulse  of  the  free  spirit  spreading  its 
wings  for  a  flight  which  is  its  ultimate 
destiny.  For  the  soul  was  not  made 
for  drudgery,  nor  were  the  hands 
shaped  for  mere  toil ;  men  work  that 
they  may  attain  that  mastery  in  which 
there  is  freedom.  The  reaction 
against  the  hard  fact  is  not  the  dis 
taste  of  the  sluggish  for  a  task  that 
must  be  performed ;  it  is  the  refusal 
of  the  imagination  to  arrest  its  glance 
at  the  very  point  where  the  actual 
predicts  and  affirms  the  ideal.  The 
rigidity  and  hardness  of  life  are  part 
of  the  method  of  a  great  education, 
44 


The  Great  Adventure 

or  they  are  part  of  a  system  of  brutal 
and  unintelligent  tyranny  ;  suffering  is 
either  a  noble  discipline  or  a  wilful 
torture  of  the  helpless.  Those  who 
believe  in  the  best  hopes  of  the  soul 
revolt  against  the  "  tyranny  of  the 
fact "  by  the  very  vitality  of  their 
faith.  The  old  stories  of  romance 
and  adventure  which  the  earliest  men 
and  women  told  one  another  in  the 
far  beginnings  of  history  were  not 
idle  tales ;  they  are  part  of  the  spirit 
ual  biography  of  the  race ;  the  record 
of  its  perpetual  excursions  beyond 
the  narrow  world  of  the  day  into 
the  larger  world  of  which  it  is  so 
marvellous  a  gateway. 

At  heart  all  men  and  women  are 
romantic  and  adventurous;  in  the 
most  commonplace  minds  there  is 
some  thrill  of  expectation,  some  hope 
of  the  unforeseen.  In  the  most 
45 


The  Great  Word 

monotonous  conditions  there  sleep 
and  wake  at  times  the  feeling  of  en 
vironing  mystery,  the  sense  of  un 
reality  which  often  touches  what  we 
call  the  real,  and  in  an  instant  it 
becomes  the  mere  setting  of  a  scene 
soon  to  be  shifted ;  mere  paint  and 
pasteboard  and  unsubstantial  appear 
ance  in  contrast  with  the  imperishable 
soul  which  acts  its  part  against  that 
fragile  and  shifting  background.  In 
the  dullest  age  of  what  is  miscalled 
realism  the  unextinguishable  passion 
for  romance  sleeps  only  to  open  its 
eyes  on  new  wonders ;  for  the  possi 
bilities  of  the  great  adventure  which 
we  call  life  are  illimitable. 

In  these  later  years  science  itself, 
the  searching  study  of  the  facts  of 
the  world,  has  become  a  more  mar 
vellous  fortune-teller  than  the  most 
imaginative  of  the  myth-makers.  In 
46 


The  Great  Adventure 

its  vision  there  is  no  more  an  arid 
stretch  of  dead  matter,  but  a  living 
universe,  through  which  incalculable 
forces  play  more  swiftly  than  thought, 
and  wait  to  match  man's  subtlest 
imagination  with  an  energy  to  do  its 
bidding  more  elusive  than  thought ; 
forces  which  bind  the  continents  by 
invisible  currents  in  the  flowing 
streams  of  air  and  make  speech 
audible  across  half  a  world.  The 
great  adventurer  has  dreamed  no 
dream  more  marvellous  than  what  he 
calls  the  reality  of  his  existence. 

On  such  a  journey  through  such  a 
world,  where  all  visible  things  are 
perishable  while  the  invisible  are 
eternal,  the  dream  of  love  is  the 
divinest  reality.  The  first  glamour, 
the  magic  of  the  golden  hour  of  dis 
covery,  is  but  the  prophetic  beginning 
of  the  romance  which  gathers  sweet- 
47 


The  Great  Word 

ness  as  it  unrolls  itself  in  the  un 
written  story  of  the  heart.  From 
the  far  beginning  of  life  in  its  lowest 
forms  all  things  have  slowly  moved 
toward  it ;  for  it  is  out  of  the  deepest 
depths  of  the  life  of  the  race  that 
love  has  risen  like  a  star  out  of  the 
abysses  of  the  night.  In  blind  un 
consciousness  life  in  its  lowest  forms 
slowly  lifted  itself  toward  that  light 
in  which  alone  it  finds  the  explanation 
of  itself,  the  justification  of  its  terrible 
sufferings,  the  fulfilments  of  its  hopes. 
Its  long  career  has  been  a  quest  of 
love  ;  and  in  love  alone  does  it  find 
that  rest  which  is  the  fulfilment  of  its 
being.  Through  a  thousand  cen 
turies  it  groped  and  climbed  ;  it  has 
stumbled  and  fallen  a  thousand  thou 
sand  times  ;  but  out  of  the  earth  it 
emerged  at  the  beginning,  and  above 
the  earth  it  has  lifted  itself  a  thousand 
48 


The  Great  Adventure 

times  in  response  to  the  indestructible 
instinct  of  the  divine  in  it;  and  now, 
at  last,  in  the  light  of  clear  conscious 
ness,  though  of  very  imperfect  knowl 
edge,  and  with  other  thousands  of 
years  of  climbing  still  before  it,  it  lifts 
its  eyes  level  with  its  destiny,  and 
knows  that  in  self-surrender  it  finds 
itself,  and  in  losing  itself  for  love's 
sake  it  finds  itself  for  love's  service. 
For  the  romance  of  the  first  stirring  of 
passion  is  not  a  brief  joy,  a  little  pre 
lude  of  song  before  the  dreary  prose 
of  toil  and  care  ;  it  is  a  sudden  flash 
of  the  beauty  which  lies  in  the  heart  of 
life,  a  touching  of  the  keys,  brief  but 
sufficient  to  sound  the  master  motive. 


49 


CHAPTER   VI 

THE   MYSTERY   OF    PERSONALITY 

HPHOSE  people  who  find  the  mys 
tery  in  which  life  is  enveloped  an 
obstacle  to  peace  of  mind  and  faith  in 
the  ultimate  good  do  not  understand 
that  a  world  bare  of  mystery  would 
be  a  world  devoid  of  meaning  to  the 
spirit,  however  it  might  jus 
to  the  mind.  Order  is  doubtless  one 
of  Heaven's  first  laws,  since  Heaven 
is  at  the  farthest  remove  from  chaos ; 
but  order  is  only  an  arrangement  of 
things,  a  logical  sequence  of  events ; 
it  is  not  part  of  the  vital  force  which 
makes  the  world  a  living,  moving 
splendour  or  apparition  of  the  divine 
will.  There  may  be  as  true  an  order 
5° 


The  Mystery  of  Personality 

in  the  series  of  fossils  which  fills  the 
cases  in  the  laboratory  or  museum  as 
in  the  procession  of  the  flowers  through 
the  seasons.  The  mystery  of  life  lies 
not  in  the  absence  of  the  lines  of  order, 
but  in  the  majestic  curves  with  which 
those  lines  sweep  beyond  our  vision 
into  the  silence  and  space  which  hold 
the  little  hour  and  place  of  speech  we 
call  life  in  their  keeping. 

Everything  that  grows  and  blooms 
and  bears  fruit  by  any  conscious  or 
unconscious  process  has  its  roots  in 
mystery  and  radiates  mystery  as  far 
as  its  relations  run.  The  rose  on  a 
woman's  bosom  is  a  single  term  in  a 
problem  which  science  has  not  solved 
and  is  not  likely  to  solve.  It  says 
much  to  the  eye,  but  it  says  more  to 
the  imagination  ;  for  it  is  not  only  a 
bit  of  matter  miraculously  shaped  to 
charm  the  sense  ;  it  is  also  a  symbol 
51 


The  Great  Word 

of  an  invisible  order  in  the  universe, 
a  single  pregnant  word  of  a  sentence 
that  cannot  be  spoken,  because  it  lies 
within  the  keeping  of  the  language  of 
infinity  and  eternity.  On  all  sides 
visible  and  tangible  things,  touched 
and  used  a  thousand  times,  are  edged 
with  mystery  and  keep  us  in  constant 
touch  with  poetry.  Where  there  is 
matter  there  is  spirit ;  where  there  is 
spirit  there  is  poetry  ;  and  where  there 
is  poetry  there  is  mystery. 

And  nowhere  is  mystery,  the  sense 
of  the  presence  of  that  which  tran 
scends  our  knowledge,  more  myste 
rious  than  when  we  look  into  one 
another's  faces  and  call  one  another's 
names.  Those  who  have  lived  under 
the  same  roof,  been  warmed  in  child 
hood  by  the  same  fire,  looked  up  into 
the  same  faces  for  light  and  leading, 
are  often  hopelessly  baffled  when  they 


The  Mystery  of  Personality 

try  to  come  face  to  face  with  one 
another  in  some  great  crisis.  Four 
thousand  books  and  more  have  been 
written  about  Napoleon,  but  who  is 
daring  enough  to  claim  that  he  has  dis 
pelled  the  final  mystery  of  that  marvel 
lous  personality  ?  Who  knows  his 
neighbour  in  such  a  way  that  motives 
are  always  so  clear  that  action  can  be 
infallibly  indicated  in  advance  ?  Who 
knows  himself?  Among  all  the  sons 
of  men  has  there  been  one  who  has  not 
come  face  to  face,  at  some  sudden  turn 
in  the  road,  with  an  apparition  of  him 
self  stranger  than  the  man  whom  he 
has  just  passed  for  the  first  time  in  the 
street  ?  The  interest  of  life  can  never 
be  sated,  because  life  will  not  be  really 
known  by  the  latest  generation ;  it  is 
but  a  fragment  of  a  larger  whole  which 
does  not  lie  within  the  vision  of  the 
most  inspired.  When  Shakespeare 
S3 


The  Great  Word 

has  written  his  thirty-six  plays,  he  has 
set  in  order  a  few  striking  impressions 
and  comments ;  the  field  of  knowledge 
sweeps  out  of  his  sight  whichever  way 
he  turns.  After  Balzac  has  come  to 
the  end  of  his  forty-seventh  novel,  he 
is  at  the  beginning  of  his  immense 
endeavour  to  portray  a  few  types  of 
a  single  race.  We  are  always  waiting 
for  the  novel  that  shall  tell  the  whole 
truth  about  life,  but  we  shall  wait  in 
vain  ;  that  truth  does  not  lie  "  within 
the  empire  of  any  earthly  pencil." 
We  do  not  know  those  who  walk 
next  us  in  the  journey  of  life,  nor  do 
they  know  us.  Out  of  mystery  we 
came,  in  mystery  we  live,  into  mystery 
we  vanish  at  the  end  ;  for  we  are  all 
strangers  in  the  earth  as  our  fathers 
were  before  us. 

Love  is,  therefore,  a  long  discovery. 
When  the  first  rapture  kindles  the  sky 
54 


The  Mystery  of  Personality 

of  youth,  the  lover  thinks  he  under 
stands,  and  does  not  know  that  one  of 
the  joys  of  loving  has  its  roots  in  his 
ignorance.  If  he  understood,  the 
afterglow  would  be  a  long  fading  of 
the  early  splendour.  He  imagines 
that  there  will  come  a  day  when  com 
plete  possession  will  give  him  his  great 
fortune  to  the  uttermost  penny.  In 
his  inexperience  how  can  he  know  that 
personality  never  can  be  surrendered, 
and  that  the  wealth  of  love  is  inex 
haustible  because  it  can  only  be  coined 
for  the  needs  of  each  day  ?  The  capi 
tal  of  love  is  in  its  possibilities,  not  in 
its  achievements  ;  the  lover  is  rich,  not 
in  what  was  given  him  yesterday,  but 
in  what  will  be  given  him  to-morrow 
and  in  the  next  century.  They  who 
travel  together  on  a  long  journey  think 
more  of  that  which  lies  before  them 
than  of  that  which  lies  behind ;  and 
55 


The  Great  Word 

their  good  fortune  is  to  be  found,  not 
in  the  luggage  they  take  with  them, 
but  in  the  greatness  and  richness  of 
their  opportunity. 

In  love  the  place  of  departure  alone 
is  visible ;  their  friends  gather  and  flow 
ers  are  in  the  air  and  joyful  words  are 
spoken ;  but  it  is  the  goal  that  really 
counts,  and  the  goal  is  always  out  of 
sight.  In  the  seeking  of  the  goal  lies 
not  only  the  exhilaration  of  strength 
put  forth  and  vitality  expressed,  but 
of  an  ever-deepening  sense  of  com 
munity  of  fortune,  of  blending  of  in 
terests,  of  a  fellowship  which  is  slowly 
sinking  into  and  gathering  to  itself 
the  immortal  energies  and  potencies 
of  the  spirit;  until  there  comes  an  hour 
when,  each  personality  keeping  its 
integrity  intact,  the  two  have  become 
one  in  the  full  and  final  unity  of  their 
aims  and  spirit.  If  it  be  true  that  we 

56 


The  Mystery  of  Personality 

largely  make  our  environment  by  the 
expression  of  our  natures,  then  they 
who  reach  the  higher  stages  of  love, 
where  thought  and  deed  are  one,  must 
enter  at  last  the  heaven  which  was 
fashioned  by  the  way  when  they  knew 
it  not.  Those  only  who  build  to 
gether  finally  live  together  in  that 
house  of  life  which  is  a  revelation  of 
all  who  abide  in  it. 

The  romance  of  life  is  always  at 
heart  the  romance  of  discovery  ;  for 
the  lover  who  persists  in  the  face  of 
locksmiths  opens  a  door  which  had 
been  shut  against  him  ;  and  seekers 
after  truth,  light,  or  gold  are  always 
widening  the  field  of  knowledge  and 
experience.  But  the  lover  is  the 
most  favoured  of  all  these  children  of 
fortune,  because  his  discoveries  always 
add  to  the  store  of  his  happiness. 
He  will  always  believe  that  he  is  on 
57 


The  Great  Word 

the  verge  of  the  ultimate  disclosure, 
but  he  will  always  find  another  day 
of  search  awaiting  him.  Still  press 
ing  on  to  that  complete  possession 
which  is  the  prophetic  dream  of 
lovers,  he  will  never  completely 
overtake  his  happiness,  never  finally 
possess  his  fortune.  He  is  more 
fortunate  than  they  who  are  rich  in 
things,  for  he  will  spend  freely  day 
by  day  and  yet  his  wealth  will  always 

await  him  : 

i 

"  Room  after  room, 
I  hunt  the  house  through 
We  inhabit  together. 
Heart,  fear  nothing,   for,  heart,   thou  shalt  find 

her  — 

Next  time,  herself!  —  not  the  trouble  behind  her 
Left  in  the  curtain,  the  couch's  perfume! 
As  she  brushed  it,  the  cornice-wreath  blossomed 

anew  ; 
Yon  looking-glass   gleamed  at  the  wave  of  her 

feather. 

58 


The  Mystery  of  Personality 

ii 

"  Yet  the  day  wears, 

And  door  succeeds  door  ; 

I  try  the  fresh  fortune  — 

Range  the  wide  house  from  the  wing  to  the 
centre. 

Still  the  same  chance  !   she  goes  out  as  I  enter. 

Spend  my  whole  day  in  the  quest,  —  who 
cares  ? 

But  't  is  twilight,  you  see,  —  with  such  suites 
to  explore, 

Such  closets  to  search,  such  alcoves  to  im 
portune  !  " 


59 


CHAPTER    VII 

LOVE    AND    WORK 

TDEALISM  as  an  interpretation  of 
life,  a  vision  of  ultimate  ends  and 
conditions,  has  always  won  to  itself 
the  ardent,  the  poetic,  and  the  high- 
minded  —  the  great  company  of 
seekers  after  light  and  love  in  every 
generation,  who  rebel  against  the 
hardness  and  injustice  of  the  world, 
hate  its  noise  and  brutality,  its  fierce 
competitions  and  its  stolid  indiffer 
ence  to  the  defeated.  Even  in  the 
presence  of  the  great  purpose  which 
runs  through  the  visible  order  of 
things  and  the  society  in  which  men 
have  arranged  themselves,  and  which 
has  come  to  light,  as  one  of  the  most 
60 


Love  and  Work 

spiritual  men  of  the  day  has  said, 
just  in  time  to  save  some  of  the  best 
men  and  women  from  despair,  it  is 
hard  for  the  sensitive  and  aspiring 
and  tender-hearted  to  bear  the  sor 
rows  of  the  world  and  to  sit  with  a 
cheerful  spirit  while  so  many  losses 
ravage  the  homes  that  are  dear  to 
them  and  despoil  the  best  fortunes 
of  men.  There  are  hosts  of  men 
and  women  who  go  through  life  with 
a  noble  discontent  in  their  hearts,  a 
sense  of  loneliness  and  isolation  in 
their  souls  ;  they  are  homesick  for  a 
world  in  which  men  help  instead  of 
smite,  bind  up  instead  of  wound,  are 
quick  to  recognise  the  good  instead 
of  eager  to  find  the  evil,  stand  ready 
in  all  crises  to  rebuild  the  fallen,  are 
patient  of  spirit  with  the  weak,  love  the 
sinner  while  they  loathe  the  sin,  are 
kindly  in  speech  because  kindly  in 
61 


The  Great  Word 

thought,  are  indifferent  to  external 
conditions  because  conditions  are  the 
happenings  of  life  while  the  soul  is  its 
great  and  enduring  reality,  are  bound 
together  in  a  vast  conspiracy  to  cheer, 
to  aid,  to  give  heart  and  hope,  to 
make  the  highways  of  life  bloom 
with  spontaneous  kindnesses,  and  to 
make  the  lonely  world  a  warm,  hos 
pitable,  many-windowed  home  for  all 
who  pass  on  the  journey  of  life. 

If  the  truth  were  told,  what  con 
fessions  of  solitude,  of  heartache,  of 
loneliness  of  spirit,  would  come  like 
a  flood  from  those  whom  men  count 
happy  because  they  are  intrenched 
against  the  blows  of  disaster  by  all 
manner  of  material  possession !  "  The 
heart  knoweth  his  own  bitterness  "  is 
one  of  the  truest  and  saddest  of  all 
the  summings  up  of  experience  in  the 
Book  of  Proverbs  ;  and  where  there 
62 


Love  and  Work 

is  no  bitterness  there  is  always  lone 
liness.  In  whatever  circumstances 
men  are  born  in  this  world,  they  are 
all  born  in  exile ;  and  in  exile  palaces 
are  often  as  prison-like  as  hovels. 

This  is  the  penalty  of  immortality  ; 
the  price  we  pay  for  the  birthright  of 
the  divine  in  us.  To  have  the  power 
of  creating  heaven  in  the  imagination 
is  to  bare  one's  heart  to  the  coldness 
and  hardness  of  the  world ;  to  see 
Paradise  at  a  distance  is  to  make  the 
desert  in  which  we  are  travelling  more 
barren  and  lonely.  As  one  who 
loves  the  sweetness  of  the  open 
meadow,  the  solitude  of  woods,  and 
the  cool  music  of  running  brooks 
finds  the  noise  and  odour  and  crowd 
ing  of  the  city  almost  intolerable,  so 
those  who  carry  a  vision  of  heaven  in 
their  souls  find  the  unkindness,  the 
tumult,  and  the  hardness  of  this 
63 


The  Great  Word 

present  world  almost  unbearable. 
They  have  often  fled  from  it  and 
sought  refuge  in  isolation ;  they  have 
made  homes  for  themselves  in  the 
vast  quiet  of  the  Nile  valley,  they 
have  built  monasteries  on  almost  in 
accessible  heights,  they  have  buried 
themselves  out  of  the  sight  and 
sound  of  the  world  in  all  manner  of 
lonely  refuges.  But  wherever  they 
have  gone  they  have  carried  the  pas 
sionate  human  heart  with  them,  and 
even  when  they  have  found  the  peace 
which  sometimes  flows  out  of  the 
heart  of  silence,  they  have  never 
found  the  perfect  society,  the  cloud 
less  day  of  joy,  the  redeemed  world. 

If  Idealism  were  at  bottom  an 
explanation  of  life  as  it  reveals  itself 
within  the  limits  of  time,  it  would 
often  seem  the  idlest  of  dreams,  the 
most  untenable  of  philosophies  ;  but 
64 


Love  and  Work 

it  is  a  solution  of  the  great  problem 
only  at  the  end  of  a  world-wide  and 
an  almost  illimitable  process  of  growth 
and  unfolding  ;  it  is  the  vision  of  an 
ultimate  perfection,  not  a  statement 
of  present  conditions  ;  it  is,  at  the 
heart,  a  glimpse  into  the  great 
mystery  of  education  which  makes 
this  life  not  only  bearable  but  mar 
vellously  spiritual  and  hope-inspiring. 
The  Idealism  which  lies  within 
every  man's  reach  and  is  every  man's 
need  is  surrender  to  the  urgent  and 
passionate  desire  to  give  his  own 
spirit  the  shape  and  quality  of  the 
divine  spirit,  and  to  create  in  himself 
those  traits  and  that  attitude  which 
he  yearns  to  find  wrought  into  the 
fibre  of  society;  to  be  in  his  own 
soul  that  which  he  wishes  all  men 
were.  Conditions,  whether  easy  or 
difficult,  are  secondary  ;  the  eternal 
5  65 


The  Great  Word 

element  of  peace  and  happiness  lies 
in  every  man's  soul,  beyond  the  reach 
of  accident.  They  who  seek  heaven 
must  take  refuge  in  their  own  spirits, 
not  in  some  solitary  place  at  a  dis 
tance  ;  and  they  must  find  i",  not  in 
more  congenial  circumstances,  but 
in  a  freer  and  nobler  putting  forth  of 
the  best  in  themselves.  The  true 
Idealist  is  not  a  dreamer  in  a  world 
of  realities  which  make  his  dream 
incredible,  nor  is  he  a  refugee  escaping 
from  conditions  which  he  cannot  bear 
to  a  more  comfortable  place ;  he  is  a 
man  who  is  patiently  and  often  pain 
fully  shaping  his  life  in  harmony 
with  an  inward  purpose  ;  who  is  mas 
tering  crude  materials  that  he  may 
make  the  vision  in  whose  light  he 
lives  shine  before  the  eyes  of  men 
whose  sight  is  less  clear  than  his ; 
who  is  doing  commonplace  things  in 
66 


Love  and  Work 

a  spirit  which  gives  them  the  beauty 
of  a  high  purpose,  as  the  great  archi 
tect  redeems  the  meanness  of  the 
uncut  stone  by  the  splendour  of  the 
structure  in  which  it  finds  its  place. 

Men  are  made  happy,  not  by  the 
things  which  surround  them  nor  by 
the  things  which  they  take  to  them 
selves,  but  by  the  noble  putting  forth  I 
of  the  soul  in  love  and  work ;  the 
two  great  activities  which  are  never 
divorced  in  the  harmonious  and 
balanced  life,  the  two  languages  in 
which  every  true  Idealist  makes 
confession  of  his  faith  and  gives 
evidence  of  its  reality.  For  love  is 
the  ultimate  expression  of  faith,  and 
without  works  faith  is  a  vain  shadow 
of  reality. 


67 


CHAPTER    VIII 

THE   APPEAL    OF    LOVE 

'T'HE  seeds  are  folded  in  the  earth, 
but  they  are  asleep  until  the 
morning  comes  after  the  night  of 
winter  and  the  sun  thrills  them  into 
life.  As  that  splendid  herald  comes 
up  from  the  south  all  things  that 
have  the  power  of  motion  in  them 
lift  themselves  in  an  ecstasy  of  de 
light  and  begin  that  climbing  toward 
the  light  which  is  the  very  soul  of 
the  process  of  life.  At  every  closed 
door  the  summons  of  the  sun  is 
answered  by  a  faint  stirring  as  of  a 
dumb  thing  in  deep  slumber;  then 
comes  a  breaking  of  the  casings 
which  have  kept  the  tiny  root  of 
68 


The  Appeal  of  Love 

vitality  safe  ;  then  the  delicate  thrust 
ing  of  a  slender  tendril  toward  the 
warmth ;  then  the  ascension  of  the 
living  thing  into  the  upper  air,  and 
the  consummation  of  its  being  in 
complete  unfolding  and  flowering. 
If  ears  were  attuned  to  those  sound 
less  sounds  which  blend  in  the  un 
heard  harmony  to  which  all  things 
move,  how  entrancing  would  be  the 
far,  delicate,  multiplying  murmur  of 
the  northward  journey  of  the  sun, 
knocking  at  the  unnumbered  doors 
behind  which  life  sleeps  in  the  still 
earth,  and  announcing  that  morning 
has  dawned  again  out  of  the  fathom 
less  depths  of  space! 

Nothing  stirs  until  it  is  summoned. 
Potentialities  slumber  everywhere 
awaiting  the  knock  on  the  door  which 

o 

shall  bid  them    spring  to  life,  stand 

erect,  and  go  forth  to  the  work  of 

69 


The  Great  Word 

the  day.  If  the  earliest  history  were 
recorded,  it  would  register  the  slow 
awakening  of  the  body,  mind,  and 
heart  of  the  race  at  the  call  of  the 
materials  and  power,  the  beauty  and 
order,  the  passion  and  devotion,  of 
nature  and  of  life.  The  deepest  civili 
sation  has  come  out  of  a  multitude 
of  responses  to  the  appeal  of  the 
world  outside  of  man  to  the  world 
within  him;  and  his  character  has 
been  made  or  unmade  by  the  nature 
of  the  appeals  to  which  he  has  re 
sponded.  In  those  ages  when  the 
wonder  and  mystery  of  life,  the  vision 
of  the  divine  always  disclosing  and 
withdrawing  itself,  the  vast  order 
drifting  into  view  at  times  out  of 
clouds  and  darkness  and  then  vanish 
ing  again,  have  appealed  to  him  most 
deeply,  he  gave  his  heart  to  religion 
and  peopled  the  woods  and  fields 
70 


The  Appeal  of  Love 

with  divinities  or  built  cathedrals  in 
which  to  house  his  thought  of  God. 
In  those  ages  in  which  beauty  kept 
company  with  him  in  his  daily  voca 
tions  and  made  her  home  under  his 
roof  in  a  fellowship  which  seems  in 
credible  in  these  later  days,  he  carved 
and  painted  and  built  as  if  the  crea 
tive  spirit  had  possessed  not  only  his 
imagination,  but  the  sight  of  his  eyes 
and  the  skill  of  his  hands;  and  in 
other  and  later  ages,  when  the  pro 
cesses  of  nature  have  bared  them 
selves  to  his  gaze  and  the  forces  of 
nature  offered  themselves  for  his  ser 
vice,  he  has  become  a  magician  and 
annihilated  time  and  space  and  pos 
sessed  himself  of  the  ends  of  the 
earth. 

In  all  the  long  years  of  his  unfold 
ing,  and  the  vast  range  of  the  voices 
that  have  called  him  to  thought  and 
71 


The  Great  Word 

feeling  and  action,  no  voice  has  had 
such  potency  as  the  voice  of  love, 
nor  has  any  other  appeal  sounded  in 
his  soul  a  note  so  compelling.  He 
has  been  called  to  worship,  to  speak 
the  language  of  beauty,  to  put  on  the 
robes  of  magic,  and  in  his  turn  wake 
the  sleeping  forces  of  the  world;  but 
the  one  voice  in  all  these  activities 
that  has  pierced  his  soul,  and  made 
him  master  artist,  magician,  and 
seeker  after  God,  has  been  the  voice 
of  the  master  passion. 

For  love  is  the  creative  force  in 
life,  summoning  the  soul  into  earthly 
being  from  one  knows  not  what  in 
calculable  distance  of  space  ;  cherish 
ing  it  while  it  neither  understands 
itself  nor  the  body  which  houses  it ; 
surrounding  it  with  all  manner  of 
influences  which  appeal  to  the  highest 
in  it ;  evoking  its  latent  nobleness ; 
72 


The  Appeal  of  Love 

teaching  it  the  great  lesson  of  the 
noble  life,  the  wisdom  to  know  to 
what  voices  to  respond  and  to  what 
to  turn  a  deaf  ear.  "  Follow  me," 
said  the  divinest  of  teachers,  and  they 
followed  him  through  storms  and 
death  to  the  vision  of  the  great 
White  Rose  in  Paradise.  "  Take  the 
throne,"  cried  the  witches  on  the 
lonely  heath,  and  Macbeth  put  forth 
his  hand  to  crime  and  shame  and 
universal  wreck.  As  the  germ  of 
life  slowly  awakens  and  shyly  climbs 
to  the  light,  so  does  the  spirit  of  one 
who  loves  ansv/er  the  call  of  love  and 
shape  itself  to  all  purity  and  devotion 
and  nobleness  in  response  to  that  call. 
In  all  the  world  of  sound  there  are  no 
voices  so  compelling  and  transform 
ing  as  those  which  are  never  heard, 
but  are  always  sounding  in  a  man's 
soul  beyond  the  reach  of  the  tumult 
73 


The  Great  Word 

of  the  world.  There  is  no  force 
which  draws  so  irresistibly  as  a  beau 
tiful  human  soul  revealing  itself  un 
consciously  in  the  intimacy  of  daily 
duty  and  homely  work.  In  such 
companionship,  as  Goethe  has  said 
of  another  kind  of  music,  "  good 
thoughts  stand  before  us  like  free 
children  of  God,  and  cry,  (  We  are 

t  9  99 

come ! 

Love  evokes  good  thoughts  be 
cause  like  seeks  like  everywhere  ;  it 
calls  them  out  of  the  depths  of  the 
soul  and  they  rise  at  its  bidding  by  a 
divine  compulsion.  It  was  said  of 
a  gracious  woman  of  the  eighteenth 
century  that  to  love  her  was  a  lib 
eral  education  ;  not  so  much  by  reason 
of  the  intelligence  that  streamed  from 
her  mind  and  heart  as  by  reason  of 
r the  impulses  and  motives  which 
she  awoke  in  others ;  for  education 
74 


The  Appeal  of  Love 

is  Jess  a  matter  of  giving  than  of 
receiving.  The  silent  appeal  of  love 
to  justify  its  faith  has  held  many 
a  man  firm  when  lower  things  have 
assailed  him  ;  and  the  appeal  to 
realise  its  ideals  has  lifted  many  a 
man  to  heights  which  he  would  have 
had  neither  the  desire  nor  the  will  to 
climb  if  he  had  been  compelled  to 
make  the  journey  alone.  It  is  the 
star  shining  with  steady  and  lustrous 
ray  at  the  summit  which  makes  the 
thorny  path  the  road  to  strength  and 
peace  and  knowledge  of  the  things 
that  endure  the  tide  of  years. 


75 


CHAPTER    IX 

THE    SILENCES    OF   LOVE 

HPHERE  is  no  more  impressive 
sentence  in  literature  than  that 
which  falls  from  the  lips  of  Hamlet 
at  the  tragic  end  of  his  doubts  and 
questionings  :  "  The  rest  is  silence." 
The  drama  rises  act  by  act  to  its 
climax,  and  culminates  in  one  of 
those  terrible  devastations  which 
mark  the  flood-tide  of  evil ;  then, 
after  the  tumult,  there  falls  a  stillness 
more  appalling  than  the  rush  of 
deepening  sound,  and  the  curtain 
drops  swiftly  on  the  visible  stage 
to  rise  on  that  vaster  stage  where  the 
tragedies  which  have  ravaged  the 
peace  of  society  are  resolved  in  a 
76 


The  Silences  of  Love 

final  act  of  reconciliation-,  and  the 
light  breaks  after  the  tempest  on  a 
world  rebuilt  in  purity.  In  that 
sublime  moment  when  a  soul  comes 
into  the  world,  its  first  utterance  is  a 
cry  which  seems  to  break  from  out 
the  silence  of  eternity,  and  to  those 
who  have  not  lost  the  sense  of  the 
mystery  and  wonder  of  things  comes 
like  a  sound  from  beyond  the  bound 
aries  of  time  and  sense.  Out  of 
silence  life  leaps  with  a  sudden  cry 
of  pain;  into  silence  life  passes  when 
the  little  hour  of  clamouring  voices 
has  reached  its  end.  The  tumult  of 
a  few  brief  years  ;  the  vain  endeavour 
to  speak  of  the  things  that  are  most 
real ;  the  unappeased  passion  to 
give  love  a  tongue  as  eloquent  as  its 
thoughts  ;  and — "the  rest  is  silence." 
Language  came  late  in  the  history 
of  men  ;  long  before  there  were  words 
77 


The  Great  Word 

there  were  passions,  affections,  deeds. 
In  that  earliest  time  before  thought 
had  become  orderly  or  conscious  a 
vast  accumulation  of  impressions, 
knowledge,  experience,  was  forming 
in  the  undeveloped  soul  of  the  race. 
Hunger  was  at  the  door,  love  was 
under  the  roof,  sorrow  sat  by  the 
fire,  work  and  danger  waited  in  the 
forest  and  field,  and  death  kept  its 
sleepless  vigil  at  the  end  of  every 
path  before  men  spoke  to  one  another 
of  their  common  destiny.  Before 
language  shaped  itself  on  the  lips  the 
terrible  facts  of  life  had  pierced  the 
heart  of  the  race  and  made  it  aware 
of  the  terror  and  greatness  of  its  fate. 
And  when  speech  began  to  loosen 
the  tongue  and  make  orderly  thought 
and  clear  memory  possible,  the 
wonder  of  the  world  without  was 
matched  by  the  wonder  of  the  world 


The  Silences  of  Love 

within ;  in  the  heart  of  man  were 
depths  which  no  plummet  of  speech 
could  sound,  and  in  his  soul  intima 
tions  and  divinations  and  visions  as 
far  beyond  the  reach  of  words  as  the 
breadth  and  sweep  of  the  splendour 
which  wraps  half  the  world  in  fire  at 
sunset  are  beyond  the  reach  of  the 
painter.  Words,  like  music,  paint 
ing,  sculpture,  and  architecture,  are 
imperfect  attempts  to  express  that 
which  cannot  be  expressed  —  the 
soul  of  man.  All  the  arts  have 
spoken  words  so  deep  and  beautiful 
that  they  thrill  us  with  the  sense  of 
the  infinite  and  move  us  with  the 
consciousness  of  the  greatness  of  our 
fates  ;  but  at  their  best,  in  sound  or 
stone  or  melody  or  colour,  they  sug 
gest  rather  than  express  the  burden 
of  the  meaning  of  life ;  they  open 
the  soul  to  a  majesty  of  visible  and 
79 


The  Great  Word 

invisible  things  which  they  are 
powerless  fully  to  record  or  reveal. 
In  all  those  crises  of  life  which 
bring  us  face  to  face  with  our  mor 
tality  the  wise  are  silent ;  for  in  those 
awful  moments  the  impotence  of 
speech  is  tragically  apparent.  A 
pressure  of  the  hand  conveying  the 
warmth  of  love  in  the  sudden  chill 
and  the  appalling  silence  is  our  recog 
nition  that  we  have  travelled  beyond 
the  realm  of  speech  and  have  come 
within  the  empire  of  silence.  Later, 
when  we  have  returned  to  our  places 
and  the  old  duties  become  blessed 
ministers  of  mediation,  we  speak 
again.  For  us,  as  for  our  remotest 
ancestors,  life  is  still  so  much  vaster 
than  language  that  when  its  depths 
are  uncovered  we  stand  silent  in  a 

I  presence    in     which     silence    is    the 
highest  form  of  prayer. 
80 


The  Silences  of  Love 

There  is  a  silence  of  vacuity  and 
emptiness ;  there  is  also  a  silence 
born  of  the  consciousness  that  the 
breaking  up  of  the  foundations  of  a 
life  that  is  dearer  than  ours  cannot 
be  arrested  for  the  time  of  the  drawing 
of  a  breath  by  any  sacrifice  of  ours. 

Language  follows  experience  and 
waits  on  it ;  and  when  the  moments 
come  fraught  with  the  terror  and  maj 
esty  of  our  fate,  language  stays  without, 
impotent  not  only  to  help  but  even  to 
enter  the  sacred  place  where  the  spirit 
stands  face  to  face  with  the  Infinite. 

Into  the  vast  accumulation  of  the 
joys  and  sorrows,  the  births  and  deaths, 
of  all  the  past  laid  up  in  the  heart  of 
the  race,  the  poets  are  always  sinking 
their  wells  ;  and  out  of  those  sunless 
depths  fountains  are  always  gushing 
for  the  cooling  of  the  fever  and  the 
slaking  of  the  thirst  of  the  race  ;  and 
6  81 


The  Great  Word 

each  generation  stands  for  judgment 
by  what  it  adds  and  what  it  takes  from 
this  fathomless  reservoir  of  life.  The 
great  ages  pour  a  flood-tide  of  vitality 
into  this  central  fountain  and  as  lavishly 
drink  of  it ;  the  inferior  ages  live  so  far 
from  it  that  they  neither  increase  nor 
waste  it;  they  impoverish  themselves. 
In  all  the  arts  which  make  the  one 
language  of  the  soul,  love  has  spoken 
passionately,  eloquently,  with  noble 
breadth  of  vision  and  a  touch  on  the 
keys  almost  as  varied  in  emphasis  as 
the  degrees  of  sacrifice  and  surrender 
of  which  devotion  is  capable ;  but  at 
the  end  of  all  the  sweep  of  speech  in 
image,  figure,  hyperbole,  there  comes 
a  sudden  consciousness  of  futility. 
Lovers  without  number  have  spoken, 
but  love  remains  dumb;  "the  rest  is' 
silence."  There  have  been  marvel 
lous  visions,  divine  glimpses,  thrilling 
82 


The  Silences  of  Love 

divinations  by  the  way;  but  the  perfect 
revelation,  the  last  winged  rise  of 
speech  to  match  the  greatness  of  the 
theme,  is  not  within  the  reach  of  any 
earthly  singer.  If  the  various  activ 
ities  of  the  soul  have  never  yet  found 
complete  record,  how  shall  its  master 
passion  be  compassed  with  any  form 
of  words  ?  As  well  hope  to  define 
God  as  to  define  love,  which  is  the 
holiest  of  the  names  he  wears. 

Not  only  is  this  inadequacy  of 
speech  apparent  in  all  the  great  crises 
of  passion,  but  it  is  the  cross  and  thorn 
of  the  daily  life  of  all  that  love.  The. 
heart  aches  with  the  need  of  expression, 
but  though  it  speak  with  tongues  of 
fire  the  pain  remains ;  it  cannot  be 
eased  by  expression. 

For  love  is  the  infinite  in  man,  and 
strives  vainly  in  all  the  ways  and  works 
of  the  years  to  break  through  the 

83 


The  Great  Word 

bounds  of  mortality.  Strive  as  it  may 
in  word  and  deed  and  caress  and  ser 
vice  and  sacrifice,  it  never  fully  dis 
closes  itself;  burn  as  it  has  burned  in 
the  far  shining  of  the  ultimate  grace 
and  splendour  of  genius,  it  never  yet 
has  sent  its  unclouded  light,  its  ful 
ness  of  warmth,  into  any  heart.  No 
song  could  cool  the  burning  heart  of 
Sappho;  no  magical  ordering  of  words, 
cadence  melting  into  cadence  in  flow 
ing  sound,  could  convey  what  Shake 
speare  thought  when  he  fashioned  the 
sonnets  ;  no  skill  nor  fire  nor  subtlety 
of  experience  could  reveal  what  lay  in 
Mrs.  Browning's  soul  when  she  wrote 
those  lines  from  his  "little  Portu 
guese  "  which  Browning  valued  more 
than  fame.  "  Think  as  a  mortal  " 
was  a  wise  maxim  of  the  Greeks,  who 
understood  so  well  not  only  the  re 
sources  but  the  limitations  of  the 
84 


The  Silences  of  Love 

arts  of  expression.  We  mortals,  with 
this  wealth  of  immortality  in  our 
hearts,  are  always  trying  to  win  and 
spend  it  by  the  way ;  but,  bestow  it 
as  prodigally  as  we  may,  pouring  it 
out  day  by  day  in  word  and  deed,  we 
cannot  spend  it,  and  at  the  end  it  re 
mains  what  it  was  at  the  beginning  — 
an  immortal  possession  for  which  there 
is  no  room  in  the  brief  time  we  call  life 
and  the  little  place  we  call  the  world. 
We  speak  to-day,  and  to-morrow 
it  is  as  if  we  had  not  spoken  and  we 
must  begin  once  more  at  the  begin 
ning;  after  the  little  outpouring  of 
yesterday  the  fountain  has  rilled  again. 
Thus,  forever,  the  lover  is  haunted 
by  the  feeling  that  he  has  not  spoken 
and  that  everything  remains  to  be 
said ;  for  no  words  of  mortal  making 
are  deep  enough  to  hold  the  thoughts 
and  passions  that  partake  of  immor- 

85 


The  Great  Word 

tality.  If  the  silences  of  love  were 
not  deeper  and  richer  in  meaning  than 
its  speech,  it  would  utterly  fail  of  ad 
equate  expression  ;  no  sentence  would 
ever  form  on  its  lips  that  would  com 
pass  the  full  wealth  of  its  thought. 
But  those  who  share  the  vision  of  the 
divine  in  human  relationship  hold 
in  common  a  vast  empire  of  hope  and 
faith,  of  knowledge  and  experience, 
which  is  jointly  possessed  in  every  part 
so  completely  that  no  word  needs  to 
be  said  about  it ;  and  the  hush  that 
falls  on  those  who  climb  when,  at  the 
summit,  the  view  opens  to  the  hor 
izon,  often  descends  on  those  who 
see  life  from  the  same  point,  and  each 
knows  what  lies  in  the  vision  of  the 
other.  Perhaps  the  highest  office  of 
speech  between  the  fortunatewho  have 
found  one  another  is  to  expand  this 
empire  of  silence  within  which  all  the 
86 


The  Silences  of  Love 

highest,  finest,  most  spiritual  hopes 
and  experiences  are  safeguarded 
against  the  ravages  of  time  and  fate. 
All  speech  that  is  worth  while  passes 
something  into  the  keeping  of  that 
silence  in  which  the  soul  hides  itself 
inviolate :  the  greater  and  deeper  the 
love,  the  vaster  the  world  that  is  held 
in  common  and  the  more  pregnant 
and  eloquent  the  silence  between  two 
souls  who  have  elected  to  make  the 
journey  together.  "  Therefore  it  is," 
writes  Maeterlinck,  "that  such  of  us 
as  have  loved  deeply  have  learnt  many 
secrets  that  are  unknown  to  others : 
for  thousands  and  thousands  of  things 
quiver  in  silence  on  the  lips  of  true 
friendship  and  love  that  are  not  to  be 
found  in  the  silence  of  other  lips, 
to  which  friendship  and  love  are 
unknown." 


CHAPTER   X 

DAY    UNTO    DAY    UTTERETH 
SPEECH 

HPHE  silences  of  love  are  made 
significant  by  its  speech  ;  for, 
although  what  it  has  to  utter  can 
never  be  compassed  by  words,  it 
must  strive,  by  the  compulsion  of  its 
passion,  to  give  itself  audible  expres 
sion.  Shakespeare  failed  of  com 
plete  disclosure  of  himself  because 
his  spirit  transcended  all  bounds  of 
language,  not  because  he  did  not  test 
every  resource  of  the  art  in  which  he 
worked.  That  Wagner  never  gave 
passion  its  last  and  uttermost  abandon 
and  ecstasy  was  due,  not  to  his  lack 
88 


Day  unto  Day  Uttereth  Speech 

of  endeavour,  but  to  the  immensity  of 
the  volume  of  emotion  poured  into 
the  shallow  channels  of  song.  There 
is,  in  rare  moments,  a  vibration,  a 
cadence,  a  thrill,  in  a  human  voice 
which  sets  the  imagination  aflame  and 
stirs  the  spirit  in  a  sudden  tumult ; 
but  the  perfect  note  is  never  sounded, 
the  last  ravishing  chord  never  struck. 
If  life  could  make  a  full  and  ulti 
mate  record  in  any  art  or  in  all  the 
arts,  there  would  be  an  end  to  its 
immortality  ;  it  strives  for  ever,  and 
for  ever  fails,  to  find  a  voice  because 
its  immortal  content  cannot  be  con 
tained  in  mortal  forms  and  shapes. 
So  love,  which  is  the  soul  of  life, 
craves  the  full  outpouring  of  its 
passion,  and  is  for  ever  baffled : 

.    .    .  yet,  do  not  grieve ; 

She  cannot  fade,  though  thou  hast  not  thy  bliss, 
For  ever  wilt  thou  love,  and  she  be  fair  ! 


The  Great  Word 

But  this  divine  stillness  in  which, 
as  in  the  secrecy  of  the  earth,  the 
most  beautiful  and  imperishable  of  all 
the  forms  of  growth  goes  on,  is  con 
stantly  enriched  by  the  interpreta 
tion  of  speech  ;  for,  being  hidden 
in  mystery,  it  thrives  on  words  and 
comes  to  its  own  only  when  it  is  put 
into  some  kind  of  language.  Thought 
must  emerge  from  nebulous  medita 
tion  and  define  itself  in  words  before 
it  can  become  part  of  any  real  mental 
process,  and  must  pass  on  into  some 
relation  with  action  before  it  can  be 
come  incorporate  in  character ;  in  like 
manner,  though  love  precedes  speech 
and  may  strike  deep  into  the  nature 
without  it,  yet  it  cannot  reach  its  far 
ther  boundaries  nor  fertilise  the  world 
until  it  declares  itself.  The  fountain 
hidden  in  the  breast  of  the  earth 
may  be  full,  but  it  cannot  bring  ver- 
90 


Day  unto  Day  Uttereth  Speech 

dure  to  the  field  and  set  the  bright 
ness  of  flowers  in  the  long  stretches 
of  grass  unless  it  pour  itself  out 
lavishly.  So  love,  though  it  be 
guarded  by  silence  like  some  divinity 
in  a  shrine,  must  be  celebrated  with 
perpetual  praise.  Each  worshipper 
has  his  own  ritual,  his  own  form  of 
devotion  ;  but  upon  all  alike  is  laid 
the  need  and  to  all  is  given  the  joy 
of  giving  faith  a  voice  and  loyalty  a 
form. 

The  deeper  the  sense  of  the  inade 
quacy  of  words  to  contain  what  the 
spirit  would  pour  into  them,  the 
deeper  the  stress  for  expression.  In 
a  vain  endeavour  to  ease  that  pain 
which  is  part  of  all  great  faiths  and 
passions,  love  uses  a  few  words  over 
and  over  like  a  rosary  which  runs 
through  the  fingers  long  before  the 
need  of  prayer  is  appeased  or  its 
91 


The  Great  Word 

rapture  spent.  But  in  the  fervour  of 
a  great  passion  these  well-worn  coins 
of  speech  are  stamped  with  a  new 
image  and  superscription.  For  love 
is  a  miracle,  and  when  a  miracle  is 
wrought  old  things  are  made  new : 

Say  over  again,  and  yet  once  over  again, 

That  thou  dost    love  me.      Though  the  word 

repeated 
Should    seem   "a  cuckoo-song,"   as  thou    dost 

treat  it, 

Remember,  never  to  the  hill  or  plain, 
Valley  and  wood,  without  her  cuckoo-strain 
Comes    the    fresh     Spring    in     all     her     green 

completed. 

Beloved,  I,  amid  the  darkness  greeted 
By  a  doubtful  spirit-voice,  in  that  doubt's  pain 
Cry,  "  Speak  once  more  —  thou  lovest !  "  Who 

can  fear 
Too   many  stars,    though  each  in  heaven  shall 

roll, 
Too  many    flowers,  though    each    shall    crown 

the  year  ? 

92 


Day  unto  Day  Uttereth  Speech 

Say  thou    dost  love  me,  love  me,    love  me  — 

toll 

The  silver  iterance  !  —  only  minding,  Dear, 
To  love  me  also  in  silence  with  thy  soul. 

In  the  countless  dramas  of  love, 
eyes  have  spoken  when  lips  were 
dumb,  and  to  those  silent  souls  to 
whom  both  forms  of  speech  have  been 
denied  there  has  been  that  language 
of  service  which  is,  if  not  the  highest, 
certainly  the  sincerest,  form  of  ex 
pression.  To  each  his  own  dialect, 
but  for  all  the  need  of  speech  ;  for 
without  speech  the  silence  of  love  is 
impoverished  and  becomes  at  last 
mere  emptiness.  There  are  hosts  of 
those  who  love  who  fail  in  the  ter 
rible  testing  of  time  and  tide  because, 
having  once  spoken,  they  rest  in  a 
single  expression  and  do  not  under 
stand  that  love  needs  the  daily 
ministry  of  speech  and  withers  and 
93 


The  Great  Word 

perishes  without  it.  If  the  freshness 
of  the  first  emotion  and  the  joy  of 
the  earliest  devotion  are  to  touch  the 
long  procession  of  the  days  with  the 
romance  of  the  golden  hour  in  which 
love  knows  itself  and  is  known,  the 
fire  must  be  rekindled  morning  and 
evening,  and  every  hour  must  have  its 
moment  of  remembrance.  So  pre 
cious  is  love,  and,  like  all  rare  and 
beautiful  things,  so  susceptible  to  care 
or  the  lack  of  it,  that  it  must  be 
guarded  with  perpetual  thought  and 
watched  with  tireless  tenderness.  It 
escapes  when  flowers  are  no  longer  at 
the  windows  and  the  hearth  is  left 
bare ;  and  they  who  would  keep  this 
most  wonderful  gift  of  God  within 
mortal  habitations  must  honour  it  with 
scrupulous  care  and  guard  it  with  that 
vigilance  of  courtesy  which  is  the  last 
grace  of  chivalry. 

94 


Day  unto  Day  Uttereth  Speech 

Beautiful  and  sensitive  as  it  is, 
there  is  nothing  so  hardy  and  inde 
structible  as  love  when  it  is  nourished 
by  daily  speech  into  full  strength  ; 
time,  that  eats  the  heart  out  of  so 
much  joy  and  blights  so  much  beauty 
at  the  roots,  has  no  power  over  it; 
and  death,  which  waits  like  a  shadow 
beside  every  sunlit  hour,  is  but  a 
phantom  of  the  night  in  its  presence. 
Care  and  toil  and  bitter  trial  neither 
dismay  nor  exhaust  it ;  it  holds  back 
from  no  hardship,  evades  no  rack, 
flees  from  no  anguish  ;  it  has  laughed 
at  locksmiths  since  the  beginning  of 
time.  Heroic  spirits  quail,  hearts 
sink  with  fear,  and  strength  is  over 
matched  ;  but  this  delicate  and  fragile 
spirit  from  heaven  remains  when  all 
other  possessions  are  wrecked  and  sur 
vives  when  all  else  has  perished.  And 
yet  it  dies  when  the  daily  word  is 
95 


The  Great  Word 

not  spoken  and  the  hourly  service 
rendered  !  For  the  supreme  passion 
must  hold  the  supreme  place  in  a 
man's  life ;  and  when  it  is  uncrowned 
and  dethroned  it  leaves  the  place 
where  it  was  once  honoured  empty 
and  desolate.  And  under  all  God's 
heavens  there  is  no  room  so  desolate 
as  that  from  which  love  has  withdrawn 
its  shining  presence. 


CHAPTER   XI 

LOVE'S   SECOND    SIGHT 

A  MONG  the  maxims  which  have 
their  roots  in  confusion  of 
thought  none  is  more  misleading 
than  the  ancient  and  well-worn  aph 
orism  that  love  is  blind.  The  fable 
of  Psyche  has  been  traditionally  in 
terpreted  as  a  pathetic  instance  of 
that  curiosity  which  opened  Pandora's 
box  and  let  a  swarm  of  evils  fly  over 
the  world,  and  which  drove  Elsa  to 
put  the  fateful  question  to  Lohengrin 
at  the  very  moment  when  her  joy 
was  at  its  consummation.  The  beau 
tiful  story,  so  weighted  with  the 
deeper  meaning  of  things,  bears  an 
other  and  higher  interpretation ;  for 
the  soul  cannot  surrender  until  it 
?  97 


The  Great  Word 

understands,  nor  drain  the  cup  of  the 
deepest  experience  until  it  sees  clearly 
the  figure  in  whose  hands  it  is  held. 

If  love  were  blind,  life  would  sink 
into  chaos ;  for  love  is  the  force  that 
creates,  the  power  that  sustains,  the 
principle  that  governs.  It  is  the  love 
of  his  art  which  draws  the  artist, 
unwearied  by  heroic  apprenticeship, 
into  the  very  heart  of  his  art  and 
makes  his  passion  one  with  insight, 
skill,  the  final  mastery  of  the  line. 
If  love  were  blind,  those  forms  in 
which  the  visions  and  ideals  that  bear 
with  them  the  fortunes  of  the  race, 
because  they  are  the  symbols  of  its 
spiritual  insights  and  achievements, 
would  never  have  been  set  in  temples 
and  on  highways  by  those  who 
counted  no  toil  too  heavy,  no  sacri 
fice  too  great,  that  celebrated  the 
marriage  of  love  and  art.  To  him 


Love's  Second  Sight 

only  who  loves  with  a  consuming 
passion  the  final  veil  is  lifted  and  the 
ultimate  skill  conveyed ;  for  knowl 
edge  and  love  are  one  at  the  heart 
of  things,  and  art,  which  is  the  record 
of  the  creative  spirit  working  with 
and  through  men,  touches  perfection 
only  when  passion  and  intelligence  are 
so  blended  that  out  of  this  commin 
gling  another  word  is  spoken  in  the 
revelation  of  the  divine  to  the  human. 
Love  is  never  blind ;  those  who  love 
are  often  blind,  and  to  their  passion 
is  charged  that  which  belongs  to 
lack  of  faculty.  Love  does  not  open 
new  senses  or  convey  new  faculties  ; 
it  vivifies,  clarifies,  intensifies  the 
senses  and  faculties  which  already 
exist.  In  its  first  daybreak  the  world 
lies  half  concealed  in  a  mist  which 
poetises  rather  than  distorts  or  falsi 
fies  proportions,  relations,  qualities ; 
99 


The  Great  Word 

when  the  light  grows  clear,  perspec 
tives  are  corrected,  outlines  become 
distinct,  hidden  lovelinesses  come 
into  view,  hidden  defects  disclose 
themselves  ;  not  because  the  light  and 
warmth  are  less,  but  because  they  are 
greater.  To  measure  the  depth  of 
love  by  its  blindness  would  be  to 
appraise  the  splendour  and  fertilising 
power  of  the  sun  by  the  rays  which 
shine  level  from  the  horizon  rather 
than  by  those  which  fall  upon  the 
soil  and  search  its  secret  places  for 
every  potency  of  life. 

The  blindness  of  love  is  a  measure 
of  its  inadequacy,  an  evidence  that  it 
has  yet  to  work  its  miracle  of  knowl 
edge  as  well  as  of  surrender.  The 
mother  who  sees  no  fault  in  her  child 
is  blinded,  not  by  her  love,  but  by  her 
dulness  of  perception  ;  the  wife  who 
finds  no  defect  in  her  husband  may 

IOO 


Love's  Second  Sight 

make  him  comfortable  but  cannot 
make  him  great ;  the  friend  who 
finds  only  content  in  his  love  for  his 
friend  is  denied  the  highest  service  of 
friendship  ;  for,  as  Emerson  said,  "  our  i 
friends  are  those  who  make  us  do 
what  we  can."  The  faithful  mothers, 
wives,  and  friends  who  accept  us  as 
we  are  as  often  harm  as  help  us  ;  they 
live  with  us  only  on  the  lower  levels 
of  being  ;  they  neither  climb  nor  stir 
us  to  climb.  Love  that  is  content 
robs  us  of  the  best  it  has  to  bestow, 
and  is  satisfied  with  gifts  of  bread  and 
wine  when  it  might  bestow  upon  us 
vision,  inspiration,  character.  They 
love  noblest  who  see  clearest,  and 
they  bind  us  with  bands  of  steel  who 
so  awaken  the  best  in  us  that  when 
at  last  we  put  forth  our  hands  to 
grasp  the  highest  things,  behold  !  our 
hands  are  clasped  in  theirs. 

101 


The  Great  Word 

The  beginning  of  love  is  often  a 
brief  madness ;  the  end  of  love  is 
perfect  sanity  ;  between  the  dawn  and 
the  full  day  lies  the  long,  gradual 
illumination.  I rony,  satire,  and  cheap 
cynicism  must  not  make  us  blind  to 
the  beauty  of  the  illusion  in  which 
love  begins  —  the  illusion  of  per 
fection.  For  love  seeks  perfection 
because  in  perfection  alone  its  possi 
bilities  are  perfectly  realised.  There 
is  an  hour  of  prophecy  in  all  noble 
beginnings.  The  artist  dreams  the 
dream  of  beauty  before  he  enters  on 
the  long  path  of  toil  and  anguish  of 
spirit  which  must  be  travelled  to  the 
bitter  end  before  that  dream  becomes 
his  possession.  First  in  every  great 
career  comes  an  hour  of  vision  ;  then 
years  of  toil  and  discipline  when  the 
vision  seems  to  have  vanished  utterly; 
then  its  gradual  disclosure  in  the 
1 02 


Love's  Second  Sight 

work  of  a  lifetime  as  the  work  nears 
its  completion  and  its  lines  come 
into  view.  Ideals  are  idle  dreams 
unless  they  are  wrought  into  character 
by  the  routine,  drudgery,  and  toil 
which  seem  at  times  to  remove  them 
to  an  inaccessible  distance. 

Love  begins  with  a  vision:  it  passes 
through  the  travail  of  the  years  ;  the 
disillusions  which  are  part  of  the 
waking  day  ;  the  monotony  of  daily 
duty ;  the  wearing  away  of  the  flush 
of  the  morning,  the  fading  of  the 
earliest  bloom;  and  then,  at  the  end, 
behold  !  the  vision  is  there  again,  no 
longer  lying  like  a  bloom  diffused 
from  the  sky,  but  like  a  loveliness 
rising  from  the  depths  of  life.  Be 
tween  the  vision  and  its  realisation 
lies  the  training  in  clear  sight,  the 
education  in  full  knowledge,  which 
the  blind  call  disillusion  but  which 
103 


The  Great  Word 

the  clear-sighted  call  the  divine  op 
portunity  of  love;  and  the  realisation 
of  the  vision  depends,  not  on  the 
early  glow,  but  on  the  high,  clear, 
later  light.  Not  to  the  blind,  the 
indulgent,  the  slothful  lovers  come 
the  great  realisations  of  the  final 
growth,  but  to  those  whom  love  has 
made  wise  in  severity,  resolute  in 
demand,  heroic  in  loyalty  to  the 
highest  in  the  beloved.  Perfec 
tion  of  character,  entire  harmony  of 
nature,  instant  adjustment  of  mood 
with  mood,  if  they  were  possible  at 
the  beginning,would  defeatthe  highest 
service  and  joy  of  love,  which  is  to  see 
in  the  imperfect  the  promise  of  the 
perfect  as  the  deep-sighted  see  in  man 
the  image  and  nature  of  the  divine. 

It  is  the  second  sight  of  love  which 
makes  it  the  joy  of  life  as  well  as  its 
inspiration  ;  behind   the  present  im- 
104 


Love's  Second  Sight 

perfection,  which  it  clearly  sees,  rises 
always  the  image  of  that  beauty  which 
is  to  be  when  all  the  ends  of  mortal 
life  have  been  fulfilled.  It  is  to  the 
blind  that  clear  sight  seems  disillu 
sion;  to  the  open-eyed  it  is  the  be 
ginning  of  the  realisation  of  the 
vision ;  it  is  the  first  sight  which 
prepares  for  the  second  sight.  Love 
can  neither  offer  nor  demand  perfec 
tion  ;  for  perfection  in  this  mortal 
life  would  be  as  abnormal,  unwel 
come,  and  repellent  as  a  child  with 
the  knowledge  and  experience  of  a 
man.  It  is  in  the  search  for  per 
fection  that  love  finds  its  highest 
opportunity  and  its  deepening  joy; 
in  its  vision  that  the  sky  above  it 
kindles  with  a  glory  which  does  not 
fade  when  the  sun  sinks  to  the  west, 
but  glows  as  if  an  immortal  morning 
were  breaking. 


CHAPTER   XII 

THE   STEEP   ASCENT 

'"PHE  questionings  of  Job,  face  to 
face  with  an  outworn  explanation 
of  the  sorrows  and  afflictions  of  men, 
were  met,  not  by  a  sudden  flood  of 
light,  but  by  a  swift  unveiling  of  the 
splendour  of  the  universe.  No  word 
came  from  the  depths  of  space  in 
which  Orion  and  Aldebaran  blazed 
like  flaming  suns,  but  on  the  verge 
of  fathomless  mystery  and  wonder 
from  which  he  looked  into  the  uni 
verse  there  issued  a  new  conscious 
ness  of  the  impotence  of  human 
judgment,  a  new  sense  of  the  great 
ness  of  the  Infinite.  Who  are  we 
that  we  should  sit  in  judgment  upon 
106 


The  Steep  Ascent 

Him  whose  minutest  work  on  the 
leaf  of  a  fern  holds  a  secret  which 
is  beyond  the  keenest  search  of 
knowledge  ?  How  shall  we  know 
what  life  may  hold  for  us  when  its 
curve  is  so  vast  that  the  full  space 
of  our  years  shows  no  bending  of 
the  line  ?  With  what  wisdom  can 
we  call  the  happenings  of  the  day 
prosperous  or  adverse  when  they 
may  not  disclose  their  meaning  or 
bear  their  fruits  for  a  full  century  ? 

If  it  were  not  so  tragic,  nothing 
could  be  more  pitiful  than  our  judg 
ments  on  our  fortunes  from  hour  to 
hour ;  so  narrow  is  the  range  of  our 
vision,  so  dim  our  sight,  so  incom 
petent  our  faculties  for  the  tasks  we 
lay  upon  them.  Half  the  judgments 
passed  upon  life  are  false  because  the 
judges  are  incompetent  to  reach  a 
sound  conclusion  by  reason  of  lack 
107 


The  Great  Word 

of  moral  sanity,  of  the  ability  to  get 
above  the  mist  of  temperament,  to 
escape  from  the  tyranny  of  personal 
experience  and  look  at  things  in  the 
large,  clearly,  dispassionately,  with  a 
vision  unblurred  by  moral,  mental, 
or  physical  disease.  The  roots  of 
much  scepticism  and  of  all  cynicism 
are  not  in  the  universe ;  they  are  in 
the  nature  and  life  of  the  sceptic 
and  cynic;  and  many  of  those  whose 
interpretations  of  life  have  touched 
the  imagination  and  affected  the 
judgment  of  their  fellows  most  deeply 
have  been  utterly  incompetent  to 
speak  authoritatively  of  anything  save 
their  own  experience.  No  gift  of 
passionate  speech  can  clothe  a  man 
with  authority  to  decide  on  the  great 
questions  of  fate  when  he  has  made 
himself  incompetent  to  understand 
them.  The  sane  man  alone  has  a 
1 08 


The  Steep  Ascent 

right  to  assume  judicial  functions  in 
the  great  court  of  life  ;  genius,  when 
it  lacks  sanity,  is  only  a  special  pleader 
in  that  court. 

And  of  those  whose  lives  and  minds 
are  sane  how  many  have  the  power 
of  detaching  themselves  from  them 
selves  and  looking  at  life  as  it  affects 
the  race  ?  How  many  have  lived 
deeply  and  widely  enough  to  touch 
the  hem  of  the  garment  of  the  final 
and  ultimate  truth  about  the  life  of 
man  in  a  world  which  was  sown  as  a 
seed  in  the  furrows  of  time  a  million 
years  ago  and  in  a  society  which  is 
still  in  its  early  stages  of  develop 
ment  ?  Surely  there  is  need  that  the 
lesson  set  for  Job  should  be  studied 
by  the  men  and  women  of  to-day, 
whose  first  impulse  when  any  pain 
falls  on  them  is  to  challenge  God, 
and  whose  passionate  response  to  any 
109 


The  Great  Word 

hardship  which  comes  to  them  in 
their  relations  with  society  is  to  tear 
down  and  cast  aside  the  ancient  order 
which  has  slowly  and  with  infinite 
pain  built  up  the  home  and  set  the 
family  in  it  and  made  it  the  shrine 
of  love. 

The  incredible  vulgarity  of  divorce 
has  its  root  in  the  failure  to  under 
stand  what  love  is  or  means  ;  and  a 
thousand  travesties  of  the  home  make 
clear  the  fatal  blindness  that  has  fallen 
on  a  host  of  men  and  women  who 
have  mistaken  a  sudden  glow  of  pas 
sion  for  the  supreme  passion  of  the 
soul,  and  have  set  out  to  find  happi 
ness  in  the  gifts  of  others  rather  than 
in  the  lavish  outpouring  of  their  own 
souls.  The  shepherd  in  Virgil,  after 
long  search,  found  Love  living  among 
the  rocks;  to-day  men  and  women 
are  seeking  Love  in  rich  and  fallow 
no 


The  Steep  Ascent 

places,  and,  when  they  find  him  not, 
cry  out  that  Love  is  an  illusion  of 
youth,  and  happiness  a  mirage  of  the 
morning  which  fades  in  the  heat  of 
the  day. 

Love  hides  from  self-seekers  and 
thrives  best  in  difficult  and  lonely 
places;  and  they  only  who  seek  him 
with  infinite  patience  and  endure  hard 
ship  with  a  glad  heart  for  his  sake 
find  him.  The  restless,  short-sighted, 
impatient  throng  who  rush  hither  and 
thither  in  a  mad  race  for  happiness, 
unwilling  to  bear  love's  burden,  en 
dure  its  discipline,  or  wait  its  ripen 
ing,  know  nothing  of  its  nature,  and 
never,  by  any  chance,  overtake  its 
blessedness.  And  yet  these  are  they 
who  fill  the  modern  world  with  cries 
of  pain,  with  acts  of  lawlessness,  with 
manifold  infidelities,  with  a  chorus 
of  cynical  denials  of  love  !  Out  of 
in 


The  Great  Word 

the  mouths  of  the  ignorant  can  <fome 
only  ignorance,  as  out  of  the  mouths 
of  the  unclean  can  come  only  unclean- 
ness.  It  is  not  Love  upon  which 
such  as  these  sit  in  judgment;  it  is 
themselves.  Love  flies  from  those 
who  approach  with  the  eager  and 
burning  selfishness  of  mere  passion, 
but  stands  suddenly  beside  those  who 
seek  not  that  they  be  served,  but  that 
they  may  serve.  The  shy  bird  happi 
ness,  vainly  pursued  by  such  a  frantic 
throng  of  men  and  women,  flies  from 
the  self-seeking  and  makes  its  home 
with  the  self- forgetful ;  and  Love, 
upon  whom  it  waits  and  with  whom 
it  bears  immortal  companionship,  sits 
content  and  smiling  by  the  hearth 
of  those  who  serve  for  what  they  can 
give,  not  for  what  they  can  get. 

It  is  true,  love  often  begins  in  a 
great   self-assertion,   an   outburst  of 

112 


The  Steep  Ascent 

egotism  which  knows  for  the  moment 
only  one  object,  and  must  possess 
what  it  seeks  though  all  the  world 
fall  in  ruins  about  it  as  the  world 
crumbled  about  Romeo  ;  but  if  hap 
piness  is  to  lodge  with  love,  to  this 
fierce  passion  of  egoism  there  must 
succeed  a  noble  surrender  of  self; 
for  the  secret  of  happiness  in  love  is 
to  pour  out  the  wealth  of  one's  soul 
and  to  be  brain  and  heart  and  hands 
and  feet  to  another ;  to  ask  little  but 
to  give  all ;  to  count  one's  self  rich 
in  what  is  spent,  not  in  what  is  saved ; 
to  find  the  immortal  joy  by  losing 
it.  The  depth  and  volume  of  the 
out-going  tide  measure  the  rush 
and  force  of  the  returning  floods 
sweeping  back  to  the  havens  whence 
they  streamed  forth.  The  immortal 
lovers  are  not  those  who  have  de 
manded  much,  but  those  who  have 
8  113 


The  Great  Word 

given  all  for  love's  sake,  and  sorrowed 
only  when  there  were  no  more  ser 
vices  to  be  rendered,  no  more  life  to 
be  laid  down.  The  light  that  shines 
from  their  poetic  and  heroic  figures 
streams  not  from  any  bliss  which 
sets  its  candles  aflame  about  their 
paths,  but  from  the  divine  fire  which 
kindled  and  glowed  in  their  spirits. 

For  many  of  these  there  was  no 
home-coming  at  the  end  of  the  day, 
with  windows  aglow  and  that  waiting 
sympathy  and  fellowship  and  devo 
tion  which  make  so  many  doors  into 
quiet  homes  the  gates  of  Paradise ; 
there  was  the  steep  ascent,  the  lonely 
vigil,  the  fierce  struggle,  the  defeat 
which  was  but  a  mask  of  victory,  the 
triumphant  death  with  the  face  to 
the  foe.  Among  the  seekers  after 
Love,  nevertheless,  these  surely  wear 
most  worthily  the  fadeless  crown. 
114 


The  Steep  Ascent 

Love  that  was  born  in  heaven  and 
came  on  earth  to  console,  to  heal,  to 
inspire,  to  transport,  never  yet  came 
for  justice  to  the  court  where  the 
misguided  and  blinded  go  for  release 
from  bonds  taken  without  a  thought 
save  for  their  own  pleasure.  To 
those  alone  is  the  heavenly  presence 
revealed  and  the  heavenly  vision  set 
in  the  sky  of  daily  life  who  seek 
Love  that  they  may  serve,  and  who 
come  upon  great  happiness  by  the 
way  of  great  forgetful  ness. 


CHAPTER   XIII 

THE    CREDIBILITY    OF   LOVE 

"A  LL  the  world  loves  a  lover  "  not 
only  because  he  recalls  a  brief 
ecstasy  in  the  memory  of  the  multi 
tude  who  are  living  in  the  light  of 
common  day,  but  because  he  rounds 
out  to  its  full  dimensions  the  pas 
sional  and  romantic  capacity  of  the 
race.  For  a  host  of  men  and  women 
life  is  a  tracery,  gradually  becoming 
obliterated,  of  generous  passions  and 
great  hopes  ;  a  fading  of  the  sky  of 
dawn  into  the  dull  arch  of  a  grey 
noon.  It  is  not  the  blackness  in 
life  that  brings  weariness  and  repul 
sion,  it  is  the  monotonous  greyness ; 
it  is  not  radical  scepticism  that  blights 
n6 


The  Credibility  of  Love 

faith  and  takes  the  bloom  off  the 
days  —  it  is  indifference,  disillusion, 
cynicism.  The  root  of  these  de 
structive  forces  which  rob  life  of  its 
romance,  its  wonder,  its  perennial 
freshness  of  interest,  is  in  the  man, 
not  in  the  order  of  things ;  and  so 
ciety  has  always  been  full  of  those 
who,  losing  the  mind  and  heart  of 
childhood,  have  not  realised  the 
aging  of  their  spirits  and  have  thought 
the  world  grown  old.  Now  the 
lover,  wiser  than  the  children  of  the 
world,  carries  the  fresh  heart  and 
keeps  his  vision  securely  among  the 
blind. 

"  Great  men  are  the  true  men," 
writes  Amiel,  "  the  men  in  whom 
nature  has  succeeded.  They  are  not 
extraordinary,  they  are  in  true  order. 
It  is  the  other  species  of  men  who 
are  not  what  they  ought  to  be." 
117 


The  Great  Word 

The  story  of  the  rise  of  men  from 
the  stone  age  has  been  a  long  record 
of  discovery  —  the  continual  rinding 
of  unsuspected  wealth  and  of  unused 
forces  in  earth  and  air ;  and  it  is 
quite  certain  that  there  are  hidden 
from  us  to-day,  within  our  reach  or 
the  reach  of  our  children,  a  thousand 
uses  of  the  chemistry  of  the  soil  and 
air,  of  which  the  marvellous  divina 
tions  of  the  last  two  decades  have 
been  only  dimly  prophetic.  If  this 
inexhaustible  treasury  of  uses  and 
adaptations,  of  force  and  material, 
were  not  matched  by  a  kindred  ca 
pacity  in  men,  there  would  have 
been  no  history  of  science,  and  the 
world  would  present  the  ignoble  para 
dox  of  an  incalculable  fortune  in  the 
keeping  of  an  imbecile.  That  treas 
ury  never  opens  save  at  the  touch 
of  intelligence,  and  the  rarest  things 
118 


The  Credibility  of  Love 

it  guards  are  accessible  only  to  the 
insight  of  genius  ;  so  that  the  story 
of  discovery  is  the  story  of  the  dis 
coverer  ;  his  growth  has  been  regis 
tered  in  the  uncovering  of  the  secrets 
of  the  world  in  which  he  lives.  From 
the  beginning  he  has  been  slowly  or 
rapidly  bringing  out  of  the  depths 
of  his  nature  great  and  heroic  quali 
ties  ;  he  has,  with  infinite  labour,  made 
a  place  for  himself  not  only  with  the 
work  but  among  the  thoughts  of 
God.  And  he  is  still  in  an  early 
stage  of  his  growth  ;  despite  the  fore 
bodings  of  the  faint-hearted  or  the 
near-sighted,  despite  the  apprehen 
sions  of  those  who  do  not  recognise 
the  multiplying  signs  that  we  are  in 
a  growing,  not  in  a  completed,  uni 
verse,  the  future  holds  more  spiritual 
and  subtle  gifts  in  its  hands,  and 
men  are  unfolding  more  and  more 
119 


The  Great  Word 

the  capacity  to  receive  and  use  these 
higher  things.  In  the  face  of  a 
thousand  discouraging  outbreaks  and 
downfalls,  men  are  rising  in  the  scale 
of  spiritual  living,  and  there  are  be 
fore  the  race  almost  unsuspected 
possibilities  of  greatness. 

The  unimaginative  suspect  the 
reality  of  the  conclusions  of  the  man 
of  insight,  and  in  every  age  the  Cas- 
sandras  who  have  foreseen  the  ap 
proach  of  fate  have  been  rejected  and 
scorned;  but  the  man  of  imagination 
is  the  only  man  who  really  sees  the 
world  or  knows  what  it  holds  for 
men.  Greatness  has  so  far  been  in 
credible  to  small  men,  and  from  time 
to  time  futile  attempts  are  made  to 
explain  genius  as  a  form  of  disease ; 
as  if  the  early  stages  of  growth  could 
be  wholesome,  and  the  supreme  stage, 
the  final  decisive  planting  of  the  feet 

120 


The  Credibility  of  Love 

on  the  summit,  abnormal !  It  is 
in  greatness,  not  in  littleness,  that 
nature  touches  the  goal  of  her  en 
deavour  ;  and  great  spirits  are  neither 
abnormal  nor  diseased ;  "  they  are 
in  true  order."  This  does  not  in 
volve  a  new  kind  of  men  in  the 
world ;  it  involves  a  higher  develop 
ment  of  the  men  now  in  possession 
of  the  world.  It  may  be  suspected 
that  a  vast  amount  of  what  appears 
to  be  mediocrity  is  in  reality  unde 
veloped  intelligence  and  power,  and 
that  society  needs  not  so  much  a 
wider  possession  of  intellect  as  a 
higher  energising  of  the  intellect  it 
is  very  inadequately  using. 

In  like  manner  there  are  immense 
reserves  of  passion,  devotion,  chivalry, 
still  to  be  drawn  on  ;  the  world  is  full 
of  men  who  might  be  great  lovers 
if  they  knew  that  love  is  an  art  as 

121 


The  Great  Word 

well  as  an  ecstasy.  There  are  as 
many  undeveloped  resources  of  love 
in  the  hearts  of  men  as  there  are 
undeveloped  forces  and  qualities  in 
the  world  about  and  the  soul  within 
us.  Under  the  pressure  of  the 
tyranny  of  things,  in  a  critical  age 
which  distrusts  the  reality  of  great 
spiritual  superiorities  and  is  afraid  of 
great  passions,  those  who  might  reap 
the  uttermost  harvests  of  love  are 
content  with  a  few  sheaves ;  they 
look  at  the  glow  in  the  sky  of  youth 
as  a  pathetic  promise  of  a  day  which 
never  dawned.  The  ecstasies  re 
ported  by  the  great  lovers  they 
regard  as  the  poetic  or  symbolic 
expressions  of  imaginative  men.  To 
the  literal-minded  such  an  experience 
as  that  recorded  in  the  "Vita  Nuova" 
has  no  roots  in  reality ;  it  is  an 
elaborate  and  somewhat  morbid  fic- 

122 


The  Credibility  of  Love 

tion  of  a  great  poet.  There  are 
many  who  accept  the  authenticity  of 
Romeo's  consuming  passion  but  re 
ject  utterly  the  sustained  passion 
transmuted  into  a  great  idealism 
which  has  its  classic  examples  in 
Beatrice  and  Laura.  In  the  pre 
occupation  of  pressing  affairs,  the 
absorption  of  vitality  in  dealing  with 
things,  the  imagination  is  undeveloped 
and  becomes  atrophied,  and  the 
stunted  spirit  grows  sceptical  of  the 
reality  and  uses  of  poetry ;  and  in 
like  manner  the  failure  to  unfold  the 
power  of  love  by  the  practice  of  the 
art  of  loving  makes  the  maimed 
spirit  incredulous  of  the  ecstasies 
and  adorations  of  those  who  are  pos 
sessed  by  the  genius  of  passion. 
Mercutio  makes  sport  of  Romeo's 
intensity  of  emotion  because  the 
great  passion  has  not  touched  him  ; 
123 


The  Great  Word 

let  the  faintest  breath  rest  on  that 
gallant  nature  and  the  scorn  of  a 
world  would  not  count  a  feather's 
weight  against  its  splendid  devotion. 
To  believe  in  great  thoughts  and 
deeds  a  man  must  share  in  them  ; 
to  believe  in  a  great  passion  a  man 
must  experience  it ;  for  to  every  man 
come  the  things  which  belong  to  him 
by  reason  of  his  aims,  loves,  faith. 
To  the  commonplace  the  common 
place  is  always  present ;  to  those 
who  have  vision  as  well  as  sight  the 
world  grows  more  wonderful  the 
further  they  penetrate  its  mysteries. 
To  the  nature  that  has  never  known 
a  great  passion  passing  on  into  a 
secure  and  noble  devotion  the  annals 
of  love  belong  to  the  literature  of 
fiction ;  to  those  who  know  what 
love  may  become  in  the  hearts  of 
the  pure  and  the  lives  set  apart  to 
124 


The  Credibility  of  Love 

its  service,  they  are  faint  transcrip 
tions  of  an  experience  that  lies  for 
the  most  part  beyond  the  bounds  of 
speech. 

There  is  a  greatness  in  love  as  in 
mind,  a  superiority  which  reveals 
without  explaining  itself,  a  genius 
which  is  as  real  as  it  is  inexplicable. 
The  scepticism  of  those  upon  whom 
this  divine  grace  has  never  rested, 
the  cynicism  of  those  who  have  lost 
the  power  of  love  through  infideli 
ties  to  its  nature  and  laws,  the  in 
difference  of  those  who  work  with 
their  hands  and  are  content  never 
to  look  at  the  sky  over  their  heads, 
count  as  little  as  do  the  blind  man's 
doubt  of  the  reality  of  painting,  the 
deaf  man's  scepticism  of  the  spell  of 
music,  the  bad  man's  denial  of  virtue. 
In  the  art  of  love,  as  in  all  things, 
life  is  full  of  the  pathos  of  the  search- 
'25 


The  Great  Word 

ing  saying  that  "  unto  every  one 
that  hath  shall  be  given,  and  he 
shall  have  abundance ;  but  from  him 
that  hath  not  shall  be  taken  away 
even  that  which  he  hath." 


126 


CHAPTER   XIV 

THE    ULTIMATE    COMPANIONSHIP 

1DORN  in  the  kindling  of  the  imag 
ination  and  sinking  its  roots  deep 
in  those  instincts  which  are  the  records 
of  the  primitive  nature  and  earliest 
education  of  men  in  this  world,  love 
rises  steadily  through  desire,  passion, 
possession,  to  a  companionship  so  in 
timate  and  so  complete  that  it  includes 
and  draws  nourishment  from  every 
interest  and  occupation.  This  perfect 
companionship  is  not  always  realised 
even  by  those  who  love  greatly  and 
wisely  ;  for  it  is  the  latest  of  the  many 
stages  through  which  this  master  pas- 
127 


The  Great  Word 

sion  passes,  the  ultimate  phase  in  this 
supreme  experience.  For  love,  has 
its  appointed  ways  and  degrees  of 
growth,  and  the  most  tender  and  de 
voted  hand  cannot  pluck  at  will  those 
ripe  fruits  which  attain  perfection  only 
on  the  westward  reaches  of  life,  when 
the  afternoon  sun  lies  warmest  and 
lingers  longest.  After  the  passion  of 
youth  and  the  deep-moving  tides  of 
maturity  there  comes,  in  the  fulfil 
ment  of  the  promise  of  love,  a  wide, 
rich,  reposeful  harmony  born  in  the 
long  years  of  adjustment,  of  mutual 
knowledge,  of  fellowship  in  the  ways 
and  works  of  the  days  as  they  come 
with  their  gifts  and  depart  with  hands 
emptied  by  those  who  have  recognised 
the  princely  possessions  borne  in 
humblest  guise.  As  in  the  later 
autumn  there  falls  on  the  world  of 
toil  and  strife  a  peace  so  deep  that  it 
128 


The  Ultimate  Companionship 

seems  to  sink  to  the  roots  of  things  in 
the  earth,  and  so  wide  that  all  worlds 
seem  to  be  folded  in  it  —  the  sudden 
emergence  of  the  poetry  or  soul  of 
the  fields  out  of  the  secret  places 
where  life  is  nourished ;  so  after  the 
vicissitudes  and  tumults  of  the  years 
of  action  there  comes  a  deep  and 
tranquil  happiness  in  which  all  things 
partake,  and  in  partaking  catch  the 
light  of  the  spirit  which  hides  within 
all  material  forms  and  shapes. 

This  complete  surrender  of  per 
sonality  to  personality,  in  which  the 
self-fulfilment  of  the  Western  idealist 
is  accomplished  by  the  self-effacement 
which  the  Eastern  idealist  pursues  as 
the  end  of  the  earthly  life,  is  not 
secured  between  strong  natures  with 
out  the  breaking  of  bars  and  the  forc 
ing  of  locks.  It  is  a  natural  instinct, 
when  one  is  stricken,  to  seek  silence 

9  129 


The  Great  Word 

and  solitude ;  and  the  finest  and  best 
are  those  whose  desperate  desire,  when 
wounds  are  deep,  is  not  only  to  escape 
from  the  sight  and  sound  of  the  world, 
but  to  take  refuge  from  those  who  are 
nearest  and  dearest.  In  the  closest 
of  all  relations  this  instinct  sometimes 
asserts  itself  most  powerfully.  The 
garrulous  ;  the  seekers  after  sympathy 
—  of  whom  there  are  many  —  those 
who  cry  out  when  they  are  struck,  not 
only  find  it  easy  to  confide,  but  to  get 
nourishment  for  egotism  by  the  very 
recital  of  their  sorrows.  But  those 
whose  suffering  cuts  deeper,  who  have 
that  higher  reverence  for  themselves 
which  breeds  reticence,  whose  habit  it 
is  to  bear  for  others  instead  of  asking 
others  to  bear  for  them,  who  are  so 
repelled  by  the  corruption  of  self-pity 
that  they  would  rather  endure  torture 
than  be  corrupted  by  it,  are  driven 
130 


The  Ultimate  Companionship 

back  upon  themselves,  and  by  the 
very  measure  of  their  love  are  held 
back  from  speech.  When  Brutus 
was  bringing  his  pure  if  somewhat 
narrow  spirit  to  the  point  of  conspir 
ing  against 

.  ,  .  one 

That  unassailable  holds  on  his  rank, 

Unshaked  of  motion, 

he  kept  his  own  counsel,  and  held 
apart  from  the  noble  woman  who  was 
Cato's  daughter,  and  whom  "  Lord 
Brutus  took  to  wife."  It  was  the 
supreme  night  of  his  life,  in  the  long 
hours  of  which  his  fate  was  as  surely 
accomplished  as  it  was  later  unfolded 
to  the  sight  of  men  at  Philippi ;  terrors 
and  prodigies  of  sight  and  sound  in 
the  streets  of  Rome  portended  doom  ; 
but  Brutus,  in  the  awful  hour  of  fate, 
was  alone  in  his  orchard.  The  note 
of  indignant  remonstrance  which  vi- 


The  Great  Word 

brates  in  Portia's  passionate  assertion 
of  her  right  to  share  the  last  secret  of 
his  fate,  to  drink  with  him  the  final 
cup  of  experience,  rings  true  to  the 
highest  ideal  of  love  that  had  passed 
on  to  perfect  companionship  : 

Am  I  yourself 

But,  as  it  were,  in  sort  or  limitation, 
To    keep    with    you    at    meals,    comfort    your 

bed, 
And  talk  to  you  sometimes?     Dwell  I  but  in 

the  suburbs 

Of  your  good  pleasure  ?      If  it  be  no  more, 
Portia  is  Brutus'  harlot,  not  his  wife. 

There  is  but  one  reply  to  words  of 
such  self-revealing  authority  as  these, 
and  Brutus,  who  is  compact  of  all 
nobility,  flashes  back  the  answer: 

O  ye  gods, 
Render  me  worthy  of  this  noble  wife  ! 


The  Ultimate  Companionship 

...  by  and  by  thy  bosom  shall  partake 
The  secrets  of  my  heart. 
All  my  engagements  I  will  construe  to  thee, 
All  the  charactery  of  my  sad  brows. 

It  is  the  office  of  love  not  to  spare 
but  to  share ;  to  divide  not  only  the 
uttermost  joy  but  the  ultimate  sorrow; 
to  stand  bound  by  the  divinest  of  ties, 
not  only  when  bells  are  rung  and  the 
sweetness  of  flowers  is  in  the  air,  but 
when  the  Great  Intruder  has  passed 
the  door  and  stands  in  the  room,  and 
mortality  waits  helpless  and  dumb  on 
the  majestic  presence  which  comes  to 
all,  and  comes  by  higher  compulsion 
than  human  invitation.  It  is  the  su 
preme  privilege  of  love  to  share  not 
only  life  but  death ;  to  stand  unshat- 
tered  when  the  foundations  are  broken 
up. 

And  this  perfect  companionship, 
of  which  Browning  grasps  the  final 
J33 


The  Great  Word 

glorious  vision  in  the  imagery  of 
"Prospice," 

And  the  elements'   rage,   the  fiend-voices  that 
rave, 

Shall  dwindle,  shall  blend, 

Shall  change,  shall  become  first  a  peace  out  of 
pain, 

Then  a  light,  then  thy  breast, 
O  thou  soul  of  my  soul  !  I  shall  clasp  thee  again, 
And  with  God  be  the  rest ! 

is  not  gained  in  a  day  ;  it  is  the  rich 
and  indestructible  result  of  a  lifelong 
habit  of  keeping  the  heart  bare  and 
the  soul  open  and  the  conscience  in 
one  another's  view.  They  alone  climb 
the  last  heights  of  happiness  who  share 
the  perils  and  toils  of  the  way  as  com 
pletely  as  they  share  its  inspirations, 
its  exhilarations,  its  joys  of  arching 
sky  and  expanding  earth.  For  love 
is  not  only  tender  and  delicate  and  to 
be  cherished  with  infinite  care;  it  is 


The  Ultimate  Companionship 

also  hardy,  vigorous,  fashioned  for  all 
tasks,  capable  of  all  resistance ;  the 
only  immortal  possession  in  a  world 
which  is  but  a  symbol  of  mutability 
and  perishableness.  And  in  its  per 
fection  it  belongs  to  those  only  who 
keep  nothing  back,  but  give  their 
treasures  of  weakness  as  well  as  of 
strength,  their  wealth  of  care  and 
anxiety  as  well  as  of  peace  and  joy. 


CHAPTER   XV 

THE    PROPHECY    OF   LOVE 

HPHE  beginnings  of  life  are  always 
hidden  in  mystery  ;  for  there  is 
something  divine  in  all  births.  At 
the  starting-point  of  life,  as  at  its 
finish,  there  are  clouds  and  darkness. 
Out  of  the  mystery  of  infinity  and 
eternity  we  come,  and  into  the  mys 
tery  of  infinity  and  eternity  we  go, 
and  there  is  neither  beginning  nor 
end  within  the  range  of  our  vision.' 
When  the  light  first  rests  on  us,  we 
are  already  shaped  and  fashioned ; 
the  mystery  of  birth  has  been  ac 
complished  ;  the  mystery  of  growth 
remains. 


The  Prophecy  of  Love 

When  the  slender  blade  breaks 
the  soil  and  lifts  its  fragile  stem  to 
the  sun,  the  protecting  darkness, 
which  unfolded  its  escape  from  the 
hardness  of  the  seed  and  the  faint 
stirring  of  its  first  instinctive  endeav 
our  toward  the  light,  has  vanished. 
For  a  little  time  it  lives  and  thrives 
and  ripens  in  the  open,  with  the  free 
heavens  above  it  and  the  searching 
winds  cherishing  its  sweetness  or 
beating  its  fibre  into  strength  and 
comeliness ;  and  then,  yielding  up 
its  life  in  the  multiplying  of  lives  like 
its  own,  it  sinks  back  into  the  dark 
ness  and  the  earth  receives  it  again 
into  the  mystery  from  Vhich  it 
emerged.  And  so  the  tide  of  beauty 
and  fertility  perpetually  ebbs  and 
flows  from  the  unseen  to  the  unseen, 
and  the  miracle  of  life  hastening  to 
death  and  death  sowing  the  seeds  of 


The  Great  Word 

life  is  wrought  under  the  chill  of  the 
wintry  stars  and  the  soft  splendour 
of  the  summer  skies. 

We,  too,  have  our  roots  hidden  in 
the  soil  of  life ;  for  us,  as  for  the 
flower,  there  is  the  warm  nourishing 
of  the  sun  and  the  stern  wrestling 
with  the  wind,  and  then  comes  the 
silence  and  the  mystery.  Like  the 
bird  in  the  legend,  we  suddenly 
emerge  from  the  night  into  the  hall 
where  there  is  the  blaze  of  fire  and 
the  glow  of  lights,  and  then  we  vanish 
again  into  the  refuge  of  darkness,  and 
nothing  remains  save  a  brief  memory 
of  delicate  or  vigorous  wings  and  a 
song  that  throbbed  for  an  hour  and 
died  into  silence.  Out  of  mystery, 
across  a  little  space  of  brightness, 
into  mystery :  that  is  the  story  of 
earthly  life.  It  is  a  leaf  in  a  book 
which  we  read  by  the  glow  of  a  brief 
138 


The  Prophecy  of  Love 

candle ;  a  story  of  which  a  single 
chapter  is  legible  ;  a  journey  of  which 
but  one  stage  is  accomplished  in  our 
sight ;  a  drama  without  a  prologue, 
and  the  epilogue  of  which  is  spoken 
on  a  vaster  stage. 

As  the  beauty  of  the  tree,  in  the 
strength  of  its  symmetry  and  the 
knitting  together  of  its  structure,  in 
the  reach  and  delicacy  of  its  foliage, 
in  the  sweetness  of  its  brief  flowering 
and  the  richness  of  its  fruitage,  has 
its  source  and  fountain  in  the  hidden 
beginnings  of  its  life  and  is  but  the 
unfolding  of  that  which  lay  unrevealed 
in  the  secret  place  of  its  birth,  so  the 
strong  and  tender  and  powerful  forces 
of  our  nature,  the  capacities  for  de 
votion,  sacrifice,  heroism,  the  passion 
for  purity  and  peace,  the  divine 
energy  of  growth,  which  give  the 
brief  record  of  life  here  its  unspeak- 
139 


The  Great  Word 

able  pathos  and  splendour,  have 
their  roots  far  back  in  the  divine 
world  out  of  which  we  come  and 
to  which  we  go. 

No  searching,  however  ardent  and 
tireless,  has  laid  bare  the  sources  of 
life  ;  no  accuracy  or  delicacy  of  in 
strument  has  done  more  than  carry 
the  light  a  little  further  back  and  un 
cover  a  little  more  of  the  mystery 
that  becomes  ever  more  mysterious. 
If  by  searching  God  cannot  be  found, 
neither  by  searching  can  the  birth  of 
the  soul  be  uncovered.  Because  we 
are  His  children,  born  of  His  will, 
bearing  His  image,  partakers  of 
His  thought,  educated  in  His  school 
to  enter  into  His  life,  no  hand  will 
ever  be  laid  on  the  place  where  we 
were  born,  and  the  sacredness  of  our 
souls  will  be  protected  for  ever  by  an 
impenetrable  mystery  of  light ;  for 
140 


The  Prophecy  of  Love 

there  is  a  privacy  of  light  as  well  as 
of  darkness,  and  the  glory  of  the 
Lord  is  as  baffling  to  the  irreverent 
eyes  that  search  without  love  as  are 
the  clouds  and  darkness  which  sur 
round  His  throne. 

When  we  come  into  the  light,  a 
thousand  prophecies  come  with  us, 
witnesses  of  our  royal  birth  and  fore 
runners  of  our  royal  fortunes.  There, 
at  the  first  dawning  of  our  mortality, 
Love  suffers  and  waits.  Before  we 
came  Love  was ;  we  heard  its  call, 
though  we  have  no  memory  of  the 
hour  and  the  place  where  it  found  us. 
But  the  call  of  human  love  was  but  a 
faint,  far  cry  compared  with  the  sum 
moning  of  the  love  of  the  Infinite, 
whose  thoughts  we  are,  whose  uni 
verse  is  our  home,  whose  fathomless 
passion  for  our  likeness  to  Himself 
willed  our  being  and  prepared  the 
141 


The  Great  Word 

way  for  us  by  planting  the  passion  of 
love  in  human  souls,  as  the  consum 
mation  of  experience  and  the  fulfil 
ment  of  life,  and  the  perpetual  witness 
of  His  heart  toward  men.  Against 
the  background  of  the  mystery  of 
His  being  the  worlds  are  but  things 
of  yesterday,  and  Love  is  as  old  as 
He ;  for  He  is  Love.  Before  all 
worlds  this  divine  energy  of  the  soul, 
for  ever  seeking  its  highest  good  in 
the  good  of  its  mate,  its  supremest 
joy  in  the  happiness  of  its  fellow,  its 
perfect  growth  in  the  growth  of  its 
I  kin,  the  fulfilment  of  itself  in  the 
completeness  of  another,  had  its 
birth ;  and,  when  the  worlds  have 
been  resolved  back  into  the  elements 
of  which  they  were  formed,  it  will 
still  be  seeking  its  perfect  expression 
in  devotion  and  service  and  immortal 
companionship.  Disguised  under  all 
142 


The  Prophecy  of  Love 

manner  of  obscure  garbs,  rejected 
and  cast  out  in  hours  of  blindness, 
compelled  to  bear  company  with  all 
uncleanness,  touched  but  never  stained 
by  all  defilement,  Love  walks  the 
earth  in  the  image  of  God  and  bear 
ing  perpetual  witness  to  His  unseen 
presence.  As  all  life  comes  into 
visible  being  at  its  call,  so  all  life  cul 
minates  and  is  fulfilled  in  its  unfold 
ing.  All  life  predicts  its  coming  and 
all  life  is  the  witness  of  its  presence. 


143 


CHAPTER   XVI 

THE   INTIMATIONS    OF   LOVE 


more  the  tide  comes  sing 
ing  up  from  the  great  sea  which 
lies  beyond  the  horizon,  runs  rippling 
into  every  cove  and  estuary  and  har 
bour,  and  sounds  the  note  of  summer 
at  the  doors  of  the  world.  The 
earliest  tracery  of  the  season  is  so 
delicate  that  it  shows  substance  and 
colour  only  when  one  sees  it  in  mass 
and  at  a  little  distance.  At  the  first 
glance  the  change  from  the  rigidity 
and  bareness  of  winter  seems  an  illu 
sion,  so  intangible  is  it;  a  softening 
of  outlines  rather  than  a  transforma 
tion  of  structure.  The  distinctness 
which  brought  out  the  interlacing 
144 


The  Intimations  of  Love 

branches  against  the  sky  with  the 
defmiteness  of  an  etching  has  given 
place  to  a  softness  of  tone,  a  tender 
ness  of  colour,  which  are  delicate  in 
timations  rather  than  evidences  of 
the  coming  of  spring.  Some  morn 
ing,  not  many  weeks  hence,  there 
will  be  a  sudden  riot  of  colour  and 
perfume,  for  summer  will  storrn  the 
world  in  an  ecstasy  of  creative  energy; 
to-day  only  a  subtle  change  in  sky 
and  cloud,  a  softness  diffused  through 
the  woods  like  a  glow  of  poetry  on 
the  hard  facts  of  life,  make  one  aware 
that  the  door  of  the  sepulchre  has 
opened  again  and  the  tomb  is  empty. 
Far  more  intimately  to  the  imagina 
tion  than  to  the  eye  comes  the  spring, 
with  its  memories  of  freedom  and  joy 
and  beauty  returning  with  victorious 
feet  after  banishment,  dear  to  men 
since  time  began.  Older  than  history 


10 


The  Great  Word 

has  been  the  watching  and  waiting 
for  the  song  of  the  dove  and  the 
nightingale,  for  the  breath  of  flowers 
exhaling  from  the  barren  earth.  In 
the  earliest  times  the  hearts  of  lovers 
beat  more  passionately  with  the  climb 
ing  of  the  sun  toward  the  zenith,  the 
songs  of  praise  rose  with  fresh  exul 
tation  when  violets  bloomed  at  the 
steps  of  the  temples,  and  the  blood 
of  youth  ran  riot  when  the  first 
warmth  awoke  the  sleeping  woods. 
There  was  something  more  than 
physical  joy  in  the  festivals  with 
which  the  return  of  the  wandering 
sun  was  celebrated  in  the  elder  world ; 
the  rapture  of  the  body  was  matched 
by  the  ecstasy  of  the  spirit  breaking 
away  from  the  bonds  of  habit  and 
casting  off  the  fetters  of  routine. 
For  a  few  short  hours  work  was  laid 
aside,  laws  annulled,  burdens  dis- 
146 


The  Intimations  of  Love 

carded,  duties  postponed;  soul  and 
body  surrendered  to  the  impulse  of 
the  moment,  and  a  kind  of  intoxica 
tion  of  the  senses  took  possession  of 
the  world.  It  was  a  brief  madness 
not  free  from  excess  and  folly  ;  but 
at  the  heart  of  the  sudden  dash  for 
freedom  there  was  a  sound  instinct 
which  modern  life  has  recognised 
and  made  room  for  in  a  vast  organi 
sation  of  sport  and  play. 

Half  the  joy  of  spring  is  in  the 
senses  and  half  in  the  spirit;  but  the 
joy  of  the  spirit  is  deeper  and  fuller 
of  mystery ;  for  it  is  to  the  spirit 
that  the  symbolism  of  the  season  is 
made  clear.  The  perfect  curve  de 
lights  the  eye,  but  it  brings  a  deeper 
delight  to  imagination;  and  the  heart 
of  the  rose  brings  more  to  the  soul 
than  to  the  hand  that  cherishes  it. 
The  air  of  the  morning,  when  bird 


The  Great  Word 

notes  are  rising  from  every  covert 
and  the  delicate  breathings  of  the 
happy  earth  are  almost  audible,  is 
full  of  intimations  of  a  divine  world 
outside  the  field  of  vision ;  every 
where  hints  and  suggestions  of  the 
unseen  assail  the  imagination,  and 
the  sceptic  stands  convicted  not  only 
of  coldness  of  heart,  but  of  dulness 
of  eye  and  brain  in  the  presence  of  a 
mystery  of  life  which  transforms  ap 
parently  inert  matter  into  ravishing 
flowers  by  virtue  of  a  magic  which 
no  man  can  explain  but  which  makes 
every  man's  path  bloom  about  his 
feet.  The  life  within  leaps  up  to  the 
cry  of  the  life  without  as  the  heart 
of  man  responds  to  the  heart  of 
its  fellow  after  long  separation.  In 
stincts  that  sank  deep  into  the  nature 
in  those  prehistoric  years  when  our 
ancestors  lived  in  woods  or  in  the 
148 


The  Intimations  of  Love 

vast  silences  of  the  desert  reassert 
themselves ;  race  memories  of  for 
gotten  associations  with  nature  rise 
out  of  the  abyss  of  being;  all  the 
forces  of  life  in  passion  and  emotion 
and  inheritance  and  undeveloped 
energy  flow  together  and  make  us 
aware  that  our  life,  like  the  life  of 
Nature,  is  fathomless  and  inex 
haustible. 

We  are  as  much  and  as  truly  parts 
of  what  we  call  Nature  as  the  trees 
and  the  flowers,  and  the  tide  of  vi 
tality  ebbs  and  flows  in  us  as  it  ebbs 
and  flows  in  the  world  about  us. 
When  it  ebbs,  we  seem  the  accidents 
or  incidents  of  a  vast  scheme  of 
things  ;  when  it  is  at  the  flood,  we 
are  masters  and  creators  and  our 
hand  is  on  all  materials  and  the 
strength  of  immortality  is  ours.  It 
is  the  return  of  spring  in  the  spirit  of 
149 


The  Great  Word 

the  race  that  announces  another  blos 
soming  of  art,  another  fruitage  of 
poetry,  another  epoch  of  faith  in  the 
highest  and  holiest;  for  then  the 
narrow  boundaries  of  the  visible 
world  fade  into  the  splendour  of  the 
invisible,  and  all  things  that  perish 
become  tokens  and  symbols  of  the 
imperishable.  Then  every  man  be 
comes  a  believer,  a  poet,  and  a  lover ; 
and  the  barren  land  bears  its  harvest 
of  hope  and  peace  and  joy,  the  bread 
that  feeds  the  spirit. 

Of  this  tide  of  life  which  keeps 
the  world  abloom,  love  is  the  divin- 
est  form ;  for  in  love  and  in  love 
alone  life  fulfils  and  reveals  itself. 
It  comes  as  life  comes  in  the  spring, 
one  knows  not  how  nor  whence ; 
sometimes  slowly  diffusing  itself  over 
the  surface  of  things  and  transform 
ing  rigidity  and  hardness  into  soft 


The  Intimations  of  Love 

beauty  and  an  infinite  tenderness  of 
colour;  sometimes  like  a  great  tide, 
rushing  far  inland  and  sweeping 
everything  before  it.  But  whether 
it  steal  through  the  senses  or  storm 
through  them  with  the  impetuosity 
of  passion,  its  supreme  joy  is  always 
for  the  spirit;  and  that  joy  rises  out 
of  the  sense  of  immortality  which 
enfolds  the  lover.  The  earth  be 
comes  fairyland  to  him ;  life  takes 
on  a  nobility  which  searches  him  like 
a  shaft  of  light  and  makes  him  aware 
of  all  imperfection ;  and  there  rises 
before  him  a  vision  of  consecration 
which  is  the  discernment  of  the  im 
mutable  and  unchangeable  in  the 
shiftings  and  vanishings  of  time  and 
tide.  In  the  heart  of  love  there  is 
always  a  sense  of  immortality  ;  and 
caresses,  tender  words,  the  hourly 
service  through  which  a  great  de- 


The  Great  Word 

votion  penetrates  every  part  of  life 
and  makes  it  sweet  and  glad,  are  the 
few  and  inadequate  forms  in  which 
an  immortal  passion  strives  vainly  to 
express  itself.  When  such  a  passion 
comes,  every  hour  is  full  of  intima 
tions  of  the  fathomless  life  which 
rises  into  consciousness  in  the  soul 
of  man  ;  every  touch  of  beauty  is  a 
hint  of  a  loveliness  not  to  be  dis 
cerned  by  the  eye,  but  revealed  to 
the  imagination ;  every  experience  is 
a  door  through  which  the  spirit 
passes  on  into  the  fuller  possession 
of  a  happiness  that  fills  the  air  of  the 
world  with  a  sweetness  whose  roots 
are  below  the  reach  of  time  and 
change. 


152 


CHAPTER   XVII 

THE   ART    OF   LOVE 

TN  an  age  in  which  the  love  of 
beauty  in  a  large  part  of  the 
world  is  the  possession  of  a  few  and 
the  passion  of  a  minority  of  these 
few,  art  is  regarded  as  the  antithesis 
of  nature  rather  than  its  fufilment, 
and  the  endeavour  to  master  its 
methods  as  a  retreat  into  artifice, 
conventionalities,  and  the  tyranny 
of  the  schools,  instead  of  an  escape 
into  freedom,  possession,  and  power. 
Spontaneity,  the  easy,  unconscious 
overflow  of  the  native  force,  the 
creative  energy,  is  set  in  opposition 
to  the  definite,  painstaking,  sustained 
endeavour  to  see  with  clear  vision, 


The  Great  Word 

to  think  with  order  and  precision,  to 
feel  deeply  but  without  confusion 
of  ideas,  to  match  the  soul  with  the 
skill  of  a  trained  hand  when  it  strives 
to  speak  its  thought  and  give  voice 
to  its  emotion.  Those  who  have 
loved  beauty  in  every  age  have  known 
that  art  is  its  natural,  inevitable,  and 
flexible  language ;  that  without  com 
mand  of  this  rare  and  beautiful  speech 
the  divinest  vision  is  blurred  and  the 
most  delicate  fancy  marred  ;  that  the 
deeper  the  flow  of  emotion  the  more 
pressing  the  need  of  channels  to  con 
fine  and  direct  it  to  its  true  ends ; 
that  the  larger  the  thought  the  more 
compelling  the  necessity  of  com 
manding  the  one  and  only  fit  word  ; 
and  the  richer  the  endowment  the 
greater  the  need  of  the  discipline, 
training,  skill,  which  make  a  man 
master  instead  of  servant  of  his 


The  Art  of  Love 

genius.  The  highest  art  is  always 
the  expression  of  the  deepest  and 
freshest  spontaneity,  and  to  the  mas 
ters  of  the  craft  alone  are  given  the 
ultimate  freedom  and  power. 

The  very  soul  of  love  is  sponta 
neity  ;  it  is  always  and  everywhere 
the  overflowing  of  the  heart,  the 
sweep  of  the  deepe'r  currents  in  a 
tide  tbat  moves  under  a  compulsion 
as  binding  as  that  which  bids  the  sea 
leave  its  inlets  and  coves  for  a  season 
and  sends  it  thundering  back  ;  the 
complete  surrender  of  self  in  a  great 
devotion  ;  that  sublime  forgetfulness 
of  which  great  souls  are  capable  when 
the  divinest  ends  of  living  and  the 
ultimate  forms  of  beauty  are  revealed 
to  them.  Calculation,  prudence,  econ 
omy  of  sacrifice,  taking  account  of 
cost,  are  as  far  removed  from  love 
as  is  policy  from  honour ;  they  have 
'55 


The  Great  Word 

nothing  in  common.  The  lover 
who  keeps  a  reckoning  of  his  gains 
and  losses  trades  in  passion  but  does 
not  possess  it.  And  love  thrives 
only  so  long  as  no  records  of  giving 
and  receiving  are  kept ;  when  mathe 
matics  comes  in  at  the  door,  love 
goes  out  at  the  window.  The  lightest 
breath  of  barter  blights  it ;  and  from 
every  endeavour  to  bind  it  with  rules, 
confine  it  to  seasons,  and  yoke  it 
with  prudence  it  escapes  like  a  spirit 
from  heaven  eluding  earthly  devices 
to  snare  and  detain  it. 

Spontaneous,  sensitive,  elusive  as 
love  is,  genius  is  not  more  dependent 
on  art ;  on  submission  to  the  law  of 
service  in  order  to  secure  the  highest 
bloom  of  beauty.  Itself  the  inspira 
tion  of  the  noblest  art,  it  comes  to 
perfection  only  when  the  ministry  to 
its  needs  and  nature  takes  on  the 


The  Art  of  Love 

faith,  the  devotion,  the  tenderness 
of  art.  To  love  greatly  involves  the 
possession  of  a  kind  of  genius  ;  and 
love  must  be  served  with  infinite 
loyalty  and  patience.  It  is  or  may 
be  as  universal  as  life ;  but,  like  life, 
it  is  more  precious  than  all  the  ends 
which  it  seeks,  and  more  exacting  of 
fidelity  and  painstaking  service  than 
all  the  arts  which  it  commands.  It 
is  so  great  a  possession  that  the  whole 
race  cannot  completely  control  and 
use  it;  it  is  so  rare  and  beautiful  a 
gift  that  the  most  delicate-minded, 
the  most  true-hearted,  cannot  wholly 
learn  its  secrets.  It  may  be  had  for 
the  asking,  or  rather  for  the  giving ; 
but,  like  the  sky  which  covers  all 
men  born  of  women,  it  cannot  be 
stained  or  lowered.  A  thousand 
profanations  of  its  sanctities,  a  thou 
sand  travesties  of  its  nature,  cannot 


The  Great  Word 

touch  its  whiteness;  out  of  the  foulest 
depths  it  has  often  risen  like  a  flower 
to  unfold  its  purity  and  cast  its 
sweetness  where  nothing  less  divine 
could  survive  the  environing  death. 
And  yet  love,  which  is  stronger  than 
death,  dies  if  it  be  not  daily  nourished 
and  ministered  to. 

This  art  is  compounded  of  forget- 
fulness  and  of  remembrance ;  the 
passing  of  the  world  of  self,  the 
building  of  the  world  of  devotion. 
Love  is  sometimes  defined  as  the 
most  exacting  form  of  egotism.  This 
is  true  of  its  counterfeits ;  those 
striking  imitations  which  are  fash 
ioned  by  the  passions  acting  apart 
from  the  imagination  or  the  soul. 
It  is  often  true  of  the  earliest  begin 
nings  of  love  ;  the  first  stages  through 
which  it  passes  on  to  its  higher 
reaches,  its  diviner  vision  ;  for  all 
158 


The  Art  of  Love 

real  Jove  so  blends  the  passion  of 
the  senses  with  the  passion  of  the 
spirit  that  the  one  is  sublimated  and 
the  other  given  body,  substance, 
reality.  But,  however  keen  and 
poignant  may  be  the  sense  of  self  in 
the  hours  before  possession  has  given 
full  expression  to  a  deep  and  clamour 
ous  emotion,  the  time  comes  when 
the  lover  begins  to  forget  himself, 
and  in  that  moment  love  begins  to 
possess  him  in  its  fulness.  The 
way  of  love  as  it  approaches  the 
fruition  of  its  unfolding  is  a  path  of 
forgetful  ness  ;  no  nepenthe  has  ever 
breathed  on  the  senses  a  deeper  sleep 
than  a  great  devotion  breathes  on  all 
thoughts  of  self.  The  story  of  the 
great  passion  is  the  story  of  those 
who  have  forgotten  themselves  and 
become  absorbed  in  others  ;  not  to 
the  extinction  but  to  the  fulfil- 


The  Great  Word 

ment  of  personality.  When  the  full 
music  is  evoked,  the  "  chord  of  self" 
passes  out  of  sight ;  when  the  man 
rises  to  heroic  heights  of  passion  and 
devotion,  he  leaves  himself  behind 
as  he  climbs  to  the  summit.  In  the 
degree  in  which  we  forget  ourselves, 
love  thrives  ;  and  this  faculty  comes 
into  full  play  only  as  it  is  trained  by 
continuous  and  persistent  practice. 
Education  in  the  art  of  love  exacts 
no  greater  price  than  that  of  for-" 
getting.  Here  lies  half  the  nobility 
of  love,  however  ;  and  here,  too,  is 
a  hint  of  its  immortal  service  to  the 
spirit.  The  extinction  of  the  love 
of  self  is  not  only  the  preparation 
for  love  of  another,  but  it  is  also  the 
greatest  step  towards  securing  that 
quality  of  character  which  brings 
freedom  and  power.  They  only 
who  are  able  to  put  self  out  of  ac- 
160 


The  Art  of  Love 

count  can  face  with  a  high  heart  the 
greatest  crises  and  take  up  with  a  free 
spirit  the  most  appalling  tasks.  For 
all  those  who  love  as  the  martyrs, 
heroes,  and  great  spirits  have  loved 
truth  or  country  or  wife  or  child,  has 
been  appointed  that  road  of  forget- 
fulness  which  ends  in  the  most  ab 
sorbing  remembrance.  A  thousand 
and  yet  a  thousand  times  the  lover 
must  forget  in  order  that  his  whole 
soul  may  go  into  one  great  act  of 
remembrance. 

But  this  forgetfulness  is  not  the 
obliteration  of  self  of  which  some 
Eastern  mystics  dream ;  it  is  that 
fulfilment  of  self  which  is  the  crown 
ing  affirmation  of  life.  "  Let  desire 
die,  that  the  soul  may  escape  pain 
and  weariness  and  disillusion,"  takes 
on,  in  the  experience  of  love,  a 
diviner  form :  "  Let  desire  fulfil 
ii  •  161 


The  Great  Word 

itself,  that  the  soul  may  enter  into 
life  instead  of  evading  it."  Not  by 
denial  but  by  surrender  to  the  master 
passion  is  attained  that  insight  which 
is  much  more  a  matter  of  vital  ex 
perience  and  of  character  than  of 
knowledge.  The  lover  who  ven 
tures  the  whole  wealth  of  his  nature 
in  some  noble  passion  and  loses  is 
richer  than  he  who  husbands  his 
soul  and  by  keeping  out  of  the  way 
of  disaster  keeps  also  out  of  the  way 
of  the  highest  fortune.  "  Blessed 
are  they  that  lose  themselves  in  pos 
sessing  another,  for  they  alone  hold 
the  cup  of  happiness  to  their  lips." 

The  art  of  love,  which  begins  in 
a  thousand  acts  of  forgetful  ness,  ends 
in  a  thousand  acts  of  remembrance ; 
and  the  secret  of  keeping  the  divine 
flower  which  fills  the  house  with  its 
perfume  in  bloom  is  continual  nour- 
162 


The  Art  of  Love 

ishing  and  unwearied  care.  They 
love  best  who  remember  most; 
whose  forgetfulness  of  self  makes 
room  for  the  constant  and  absorbing 
thought  of  another;  on  whose  lips 
those  words  are  always  forming  which 
keep  love  fresh  by  the  expression  on 
which  and  by  which  it  lives,  and 
whose  hands  are  so  swift  to  serve 
that  they  seem  like  devout  thoughts 
encircling  and  protecting  and  cherish 
ing.  If  a  great  passion  is  to  flood 
the  channels  of  daily  life  with  a 
stream  that  vivifies  and  sings  and 

o 

flashes  with  the  light  of  heaven,  it 
must  be  fed  day  by  day  with  count 
less  rivulets  of  little  devotions,  minor 
tendernesses,  minute  ministries;  each 
a  tiny  stream,  but  flowing  together 
in  a  deep  and  flooding  current  from 
soul  to  soul. 


163 


CHAPTER   XVIII 

LOVE   AND    LAW 

HPHE  most  sublime  divination  ever 
made  by  men  is  the  declaration 
that  God  is  Love.  The  audacity  of 
it  in  a  world  devastated  by  sorrow 
and  a  society  ruled  by  force  is  evi 
dence  of  its  truth.  Through  clouds 
of  ignorance,  amid  cries  of  anguish, 
in  the  presence  of  victorious  crimes 
and  enthroned  and  sceptred  wrongs, 
compassed  about  with  apparently 
overwhelming  evidences  of  moral 
chaos  and  spiritual  wreck,  the  genius 
that  is  in  the  soul  of  the  race  flashed 
a  sudden  light  on  the  very  heart  of 
the  mystery  and  found  Love  seated 
there,  immortal,  invincible,  omnipo- 
164 


Love  and  Law 

tent.  Since  that  heroic  word  of  faith 
was  spoken  there  have  been  two 
thousand  years  of  strife  and  misery 
and  confusion ;  society  has  been 
shaken  again  and  again  by  destruc 
tive  forces  and  rebuilt  only  to  be 
wrecked  afresh ;  the  old  order  has 
passed  and  the  new  has  come  only 
to  become  old  itself  and  yield  to  the 
pressure  of  the  later  need;  the  world 
has  been  lifted  for  the  first  time  into 
a  light  of  knowledge  of  its  races  and 
their  conditions  wellnigh  complete ; 
and  men  are  appalled  by  the  work 
to  be  done  before  human  conditions 
are  made  wholesome  and  safe. 

Through  all  the  confusion  without 
and  within,  the  vision  of  Love  en 
throned  has  never  faded  from  the 
thought  and  faith  of  the  spiritually 
minded.  Not  only  have  all  other 
explanations  of  the  universe  seemed 


The  Great  Word 

incredible,  but  to  reason  itself  have 
come  great  confirmations  of  the  truth 
of  the  sublime  divination,  as  through 
clouds  and,  darkness  science  has  dis 
cerned  the  outlines  of  an  order,  not 
fixed  and  arbitrary,  but  vital,  ascend 
ing,  passing  on  through  the  passion 
for  self  to  the  passion  for  others,  and 
predicting  the  other  great  truth  that 
love  and  law  are  spirit  and  method 
in  a  sublime  progression  of  creative 
energy. 

The  apparent  antithesis  between 
law  and  love  has  not  only  led  to 
numberless  confusions  of  thought, 
but  is  due  to  a  confusion  of  thought. 
Law  has  been  set  before  the  mind  of 
the  race  as  austere,  inflexible,  divinely 
inexorable  ;  the  very  structure  of  the 
moral  order,  the  very  fibre  of  the 
moral  nature,  something  so  august 
and  sovereign  that  the  gods  have 
166 


Love  and  Law 

bowed  before  it;  a  force  behind  all 
forces  as  the  Fates  or  Norns  watched 
in  deep  shadow  behind  Zeus  and 
Odin,  and  measured  their  span  of 
life  with  relentless  ringers.  Love, 
on  the  other  hand,  has  been  pictured 
as  a  beautiful  emotion,  a  divine  im 
pulse,  a  cherishing  tenderness,  a 
yearning  over  men  which  forgot  their 
offences  in  its  passion  for  helping 
them,  but  lacking  divine  rigour  of 
righteousness.  Law  commanded,  but 
Love  persuaded  ;  Law  punished,  but 
Love  pardoned  ;  Law  enforced  obedi 
ence  by  terrible  penalties,  Love  stood 
beside  the  culprit  and  bore  the  pen 
alties  with  him.  Good  men  of  logical 
mind  have  not  only  failed  to  under 
stand  the  nature  of  Love,  but  have 
been  distrustful  of  its  integrity  and 
doubtful  of  its  power  to  govern. 
There  have  been  a  thousand  mis- 
167 


The  Great  Word 

apprehensions  of  Love  because  its 
lower  have  been  so  often  mistaken 
for  its  higher  manifestations.  Those 
who  love  are  often  blind,  but  Love 
is  never  blind  ;  those  who  love  are 
often  weak  through  ignorance,  but 
Love  is  open-eyed  and  strong.  The 
mother  who  defeats  the  growth  of 
her  child  by  releasing  it  from  a  dis 
tasteful  discipline  is  not  devoted  but 
ignorant;  the  father  who  shields  his 
son  from  the  penalties  that  might 
arrest  the  downward  tendency  is  not 
tender  but  cruel.  Love  neither 
evades  nor  conceals,  because  it  seeks 
only  the  best,  not  the  easiest  or  the 
most  comfortable  way  for  one  upon 
whom  it  lavishes  its  wealth.  Law 
apprehends  the  offender  if  it  dis 
covers  him,  brings  him  to  the  bar 
and  punishes  him.  It  sees  only  the 
deed  and  can  punish  only  the  doer; 
1 68 


Love  and  Law 

its  vision  and  its  power  are  wholly 
external.  Love  discerns  what  is  in 
the  heart,  commands  the  offender  to 
confess  the  offence  which  is  still 
undiscovered,  because  by  confession 
alone  can  the  spirit  be  set  right; 
forces  the  sinner  whom  it  loves  into 
the  hands  of  Law,  stands  beside  him 
in  the  dock,  bears  with  him  the 
awful  words  of  judgment,  and  goes 
with  him  to  the  prison  which  is  the 
only  way  back  to  honour  and  peace. 
Before  Law  moved,  Love  saw  the 
offence  and  gathered  its  awful  stern 
ness  ;  after  Law  has  forgotten,  Love 
bears  the  disgrace  and  carries  the 
badge  of  shame  and  endures  because 
it  punishes  only  to  save.  Law  takes 
the  culprit  to  the  cell  and  locks  the 
door,  Love  goes  into  prison  and 
shares  the  humiliation  and  misery. 
For  if  Love  is  the  most  beautiful 
169 


The  Great  Word 

thing  in  the  world,  it  is  also  the  most 
terrible ;  God  is  Love  because  in  his 
presence  no  evil  can  live  ;  to  all  who 
are  out  of  right  relation  with  him  he 
is  a  consuming  fire.  Hell,  whatever 
form  it  take,  is  not  the  measure  of 
his  wrath,  but  of  his  passion  for 
purity  ;  not  the  process  by  which  he 
punishes,  but  by  which  he  purifies. 
Even  if  it  were  only  a  place  of  tor 
ment  he  must  be  in  it,  for  wherever 
the  spirits  of  men  cry  out  uncon 
sciously  in  the  bitterness  of  mis 
directed  energy,  lost  opportunity, 
infidelity  to  the  highest  in  them,  there 
he  must  be;  and  where  he  is,  there 
may  be  suffering  but  there  cannot  be 
the  torment  of  despair.  Law  regu 
lates  the  conduct,  but  Love  cleanses 
the  very  springs  of  being  ;  Law  pun 
ishes,  but  Love  compels  the  rebuilding 
of  the  nature.  The  return  to  life  is 
170 


Love  and  Law 

often  far  more  painful  than  death  ; 
and  the  power  which  banishes  death 
imposes  the  agony  of  rebirth.  Love 
cannot  pause  until  it  has  brought 
out  the  highest  nobility  in  the  spirit 
to  which  it  gives  itself;  cannot  rest 
until  it  has  made  final  happiness  sure 
by  perfect  purification: 

"  Love  is  incompatible 

With  falsehood,  —  purifies,  assimilates 

All  other  passions  to  itself." 

Because  God  is  Love  the  universe 
must  finally  be  cleansed  to  its  outer 
most  edge ;  because  he  loves  men, 
there  must  come  the  suffering,  denial, 
punishment  which  constitute  the  edu 
cation  of  the  spirit  into  freedom  and 
power. 

If  a    man  would   live  at  ease,  let  ' 

him  beware  of  Love.     If  he  love  a 

country,  it  may  call  him  suddenly  to 

hardship  and  death  ;  if  he  love  Art, 

171 


The  Great  Word 

it  will  set  him  heart-breaking  lessons 
of  trial  and  self-surrender;  if  he  love 
Truth,  it  will  call  him  to  part  com 
pany  with  his  friend;  if  he  love  men, 
their  sorrows  will  sit  by  his  fire  and 
shadow  its  brightness;  if  he  love 
some  other  soul  as  the  life  of  his  life, 
he  must  put  his  happiness  at  the 
hazard  of  every  day's  chances  of  life 
and  death ;  if  he  give  himself  to 
some  great  devotion,  he  must  be 
ready  to  be  searched  through  and 
through  as  by  fingers  of  fire,  to  be 
called  higher  and  higher  by  a  voice 
which  takes  no  heed  of  obstacles,  to 
live  day  by  day  in  the  presence  of  an 
ideal  which  accepts  nothing  less  per 
fect  than  itself. 

For  Love  is  a  more  terrible  master 

than  Law,  and  they  who  follow  must 

stand  ready  to  strip  themselves  of  all 

lesser  possessions.     Dante  looked  at 

172 


Love  and  Law 

the  terrors  of  Hell  and  heard  the 
groans  of  Purgatory  before  he  found 
Beatrice  waiting  to  walk  beside  him 
in  the  ineffable  sweetness  and  peace 
of  Paradise;  for  the  keys  of  the 
heavenly  place  were  in  the  hands 
of  Love. 


173 


CHAPTER   XIX 

THE    INFINITE   IN   THE    FINITE 

"OOBERT  Browning,  who  had  the 
highest  good  fortune  in  love, 
must  be  counted  among  its  great  in 
terpreters.  He  saw  it  in  its  widest 
relations,  in  its  deepest  significance, 
in  its  highest  reaches  of  joy  and  at 
tainment.  To  him,  as  to  Dante, 
Shakespeare,  and  the  other  masters 
of  life  and  art,  the  secret  of  life  lies 
deeper  than  the  intellect,  and  has  its 
seat  in  the  soul.  Below  the  action 
of  the  mind,  consciously  directed  to 
ends  consciously  selected,  there  lie 
the  deeps  of  being,  out  of  which  rise 
the  great  impulses,  the  master  pas 
sions,  the  inspirations  and  enthusi- 
174 


The  Infinite  in  the  Finite 

asms  which  give  life  its  colour  and 
movement.  There  the  tides  of  life 
rise  and  fall  as  they  flow  from  and 
return  to  the  sea  of  being  upon  which 
all  things  float  in  sublime  stability  ; 
for  every  life,  as  Emerson  believed, 
is  an  inlet  into  the  universal  life ; 
and  while  each  man  keeps  his  soul 
in  eternal  integrity,  he  is  for  ever 
part  of  a  spiritual  unity  which  is 
the  divine  nature  of  things. 

In  quiet  hours,  when  what  is  called 
inspiration  breathes  on  a  human 
spirit,  and  that  spirit  vibrates  into  a 
music  unheard  before,  the  finite  and 
the  infinite  blend  for  a  moment,  and 
a  fresh  wave  of  life  flows  into  the 
sphere  of  mortal  striving  and  seek 
ing.  A  poet  whose  genius  was  of 
the  blithest  and  wittiest,  but  who 
knew,  as  all  poets  must,  the  touch 
of  the  mystery  and  pathos  of  living, 


The  Great  Word 

once  said,  before  a  cheerful  fire  in. 
the  freedom  of  friendly  talk,  that  he 
knew  how  he  wrote  verse,  but  not 
how  he  wrote  poetry.  Writing 
poetry,  he  added,  is  like  wading  into 
the  sea.  You  are  chilled  and  reluc 
tant,  and  tempted  to  turn  back ;  and 
while  you  stand  hesitating  a  great 
wave  rolls  in  from  the  infinite  and 
bears  you  out  —  you  know  not  how 
nor  whither.  Far  below  the  plane 
of  conscious  thinking  and  acting 
these  secret  passages  open  out  into 
the  vast,  mysterious  deeps  whence 
life  comes  and  to  which  life  returns. 
We  skirt  the  shores  of  these  abysses 
with  daring  thought,  with  watching 
of  signs  and  seasons,  of  the  rising 
and  setting  of  stars,  with  long  and 
painful  vigils  of  study  ;  but  how  nar 
row  are  the  limits  of  our  knowledge, 
and  how  far  off  lie  the  ultimate  truths 
176 


The  Infinite  in  the  Finite 

from  the  heights  which  we  have 
climbed  with  painful  steps !  The 
wisest  of  the  children  of  men  must 
still  say,  with  the  most  ignorant, 
"  Thy  sea  is  so  vast  and  my  ship  is 
so  small !  " 

It  is  this  environing  mystery  that 
touches  the  commonest  things  with 
poetry  and  makes  each  inanimate 
object  a  point  of  departure  for  the 
imagination.  "All  poetry,'*  wrote 
Ruskin,  "  is  the  problem  of  putting 
the  infinite  into  the  finite."  As  the 
boy  in  his  wildest  play  has  sudden 
intimations  of  the  greatness  of  the 
tasks  which  await  him  in  manhood 
and  the  inspiration  which  is  to  come 
with  them,  and  feels  his  heart  leap 
as  if  a  bugle  were  sounded  from 
some  height  in  his  future,  so  to  the 
most  unimaginative  there  come  at 

times  swift  liftings  of  the  veil,  stir- 
12  I77 


The  Great  Word 

rings  of  wings  in  the  air,  mysterious 
hints  and  sucmestions  of  worlds  not 

OO 

realised  ;  while  to  the  imaginative 
and  spiritually  minded  all  paths  are 
haunted  by  unseen  presences,  and 
the  solid  earth  seems  but  a  film  be 
hind  which  moves  the  vaster  reality 
of  which  it  is  part.  That  larger 
world  lies  so  near  that  a  child's  hand 
often  holds  the  door  ajar  for  a  mo 
ment.  A  shout  of  recognition,  a 
cry  of  distress,  the  sudden  breaking 
of  light  on  a  face  when  the  soul  is 
touched,  the  pressure  of  a  hand,  an 
unexpected  glimpse  of  sky  through 
the  trees,  the  splendour  of  a  star 
emerging  from  a  cloud,  a  breath  of 
sweetness  from  unseen  flowers  — 
how  many  and  how  various  are  the 
things  and  times  that  on  the  instant 
make  us  aware  of  the  infinite  which 
fills  and  enfolds  the  finite,  and  in  the 
178 


The  Infinite  in  the  Finite 

light  of  which  alone  all  passions,  re 
lations,  aims,  and  actions  have  their 
meaning  and  value  !  The  final  ques 
tion  touching  any  act,  achievement, 
purpose,  or  passion  is,  "  Flow  much 
of  the  infinite  does  it  contain  or 
suggest  ?  " 

Of  this  hidden  wealth,  this  veiled 
splendour,  love  is  the  perpetual  and 
convincing  witness,  bearing  its  tes 
timony  where  no  records  are  kept 
and  touching  obscurities  and  forgot 
ten  places  with  the  same  pathos  or 
beauty  which  it  brings  to  the  highest 
fortune  and  the  greatest  station.  It 
is  only  heaven  that  is  to  be  had  for 
the  asking,  and  it  is  love  alone  that 
comes  to  all  who  summon  it  by  giv 
ing  it.  For  the  infinite  is  always 
striving  to  penetrate  the  finite  and 
possess  it,  and  love  waits  like  a  flood 
of  light  for  the  narrowest  crevice 
179 


The  Great  Word 

through    which    it    may    enter.     As 
the    heat    of  the    sun    in    the    early 
summer   searches   the   earth   for   the 
least    potentiality   of  life   hidden   in 
its  bosom  and  summons  it  forth  to 
growth  and  fruition,  so  love  enfolds 
the  spirit  of  man,   softly  laying  its 
invisible  ringers   on  every  door  and 
window  if  by  any  means  it  may  enter 
and  possess  the  house.      It  is  never 
a  question  of  the  coming  of  love,  it 
is  always  a  question  of  opening  the 
door    to    receive    it.      It   is   never  a 
question   of  the   enfolding   presence 
of  the  infinite  about  us  like  an  at 
mosphere  which  we  do  not  see  but 
without  which  we   instantly  perish  ; 
it  is  always  and  only  a  question  of 
our  capacity  to  see    and   to    under 
stand.     Here   lies   the  dividing  line 
which   separates    the    prophets    and 
poets   from   those   who  toil  without 
180 


The  Infinite  in  the  Finite 

inspiration  and  who  live  without 
vision ;  those  who  know  the  hard 
ness  of  the  world,  but  are  aware  also 
of  the  splendour  of  the  universe,  from 
those  who  toil  in  the  fields  and  have 
no  glimpse  of  the  horizon. 

The  prophets  and  poets  are  the 
true  realists  and  masters  of  life  ;  they 
only  are  the  competent  leaders  and 
builders  ;  other  men  are  the  artificers 
of  their  designs,  the  executors  of 
their  plans.  The  statesman  always 
has  something  of  the  prophet  and 
poet  in  him,  for  statesmanship  is 
always  a  matter  of  vision  :  the  grasp 
of  the  interests  of  a  great  nation  in 
their  entirety,  and  a  forecasting  of 
its  fortunes  in  the  light  of  eternal 
law.  The  man  of  scientific  genius, 
who  sets  vast  masses  of  fact  in  order 
and  ascends  from  knowledge  to  truth, 
is  both  prophet  and  poet ;  and  so  is 
181 


The  Great  Word 

the  great  engineer  who  calculates 
so  nicely  that  mountain  ranges  are 
pierced  with  unerring  accuracy  and 
great  bridges  are  swung  in  air  so  har 
moniously  with  the  laws  of  the  uni 
verse  that  they  respond  to  the  changes 
of  temperature  like  the  strings  of  a 
violin. 

But  the  truest  of  the  prophets 
and  the  most  real  of  the  poets  is  the 
lover,  who  sees  the  possibilities  of 
growth  which  are  the  signs  of  the 
infinite  and  discerns  the  beauty 
which  is  its  garment.  Love  has 
walked  the  ways  of  life  in  a  million 
forms  and  worn  as  many  masks ; 
but  never  yet  has  it  departed  with 
out  a  revelation  of  its  divinity,  an 
exhibition  of  its  power.  It  came 
once  in  the  lowliest  of  guises,  bore 
the  heaviest  burdens,  carried  the 
deepest  griefs,  was  despised  through 
182 


The  Infinite  in  the  Finite 

ignorance,  and  rejected,  pierced, 
nailed,  smitten  with  bitter  words 
and  sacrilegious  hands,  tortured  and 
buried.  And,  behold,  the  tomb  was 
empty  and  an  angel  stood  beside  it ! 
Love  had  passed  the  gate  of  death 
and  gone  forth  again  to  serve,  to 
cherish,  to  enlighten,  to  redeem  ! 


183 


CHAPTER   XX 

THE   EXPECTATION    OF   LOVE 

gURNE-JONES'S  "Dawn,"  a 
lovely  figure,  moves  through  the 
slumbering  town  with  clashing  cym 
bals,  her  eyes  still  veiled  with  sleep, 
her  form  still  relaxed  ;  borne  forward, 
not  by  her  will,  but  by  the  wind  of 
the  morning  breathing  life  across  the 
world.  At  every  gate  in  the  city, 
on  every  highway,  in  every  square, 
Love  waits  —  silent,  watchful,  expec 
tant.  She  may  have  travelled  far, 
but  she  has  never  been  borne  for 
ward  by  any  force  which  swept  her 
along  as  the  drowsy  Dawn  is  swept ; 
she  has  been  drawn  on  by  hopes  and 
184 


The  Expectation  of  Love 

anticipations  which  rise  out  of  the 
depths  of  her  own  heart.  She  may 
have  had  great  happiness,  incredible 
good  fortune,  by  the  way;  but  her 
face  is  set  towards  the  future,  and 
the  past  is  dear  to  her,  not  for  what 
it  gave,  but  for  what  it  promised. 
She  has  heard  many  words  that  set 
her  heart  beating,  but  she  is  still 
waiting  for  the  great  word  that  shall 
convey  the  ultimate  secret  of  her 
nature,  that  shall  put  her  in  com 
plete  possession  of  that  which  is  al 
ready  hers.  Many  things  content, 
but  nothing  satisfies  her ;  she  counts 
her  wealth,  not  with  a  brooding  but 
with  an  uplifted  face.  She  hoards 
nothing ;  everything  she  has  is  at 
risk  in  the  great  adventure,  and  the 
winds  of  heaven  everywhere  bear 
forward  or  beat  back  her  argosies. 
She  builds  no  secure  places  where 


The  Great  Word 

she  may  hide  her  gains ;  she  puts 
them  into  the  venture  upon  which 
she  has  staked  all  her  fortune.  She 
may  suffer  cruelly ;  her  heart  may 
be  torn  and  her  hands  pierced;  but 
her  wealth  cannot  be  taken  from 
her,  for  it  is  stored  in  the  secret 
places  of  her  soul. 

However  much  Life  may  offer 
Love,  no  gift  fully  compasses  her 
desires,  for  none  is  great  enough  to 
occupy  her  soul.  When  her  hands 
are  full,  her  heart  cries  out  for  more 
and  better  things ;  and  no  sooner 
have  her  eyes  rested  on  the  treas 
ures  which  the  days  have  brought 
her  than  they  are  lifted  again  to  the 
larger  gifts  which  the  hands  of  to 
morrow  are  silently  and  mysteriously 
bringing  her.  With  Love  there  was 
a  beginning,  although  it  seems  to 
her  that  behind  that  memorable  day 
186 


The  Expectation  of  Love 

there  was  a  shadowy  procession  of 
days  always  moving  toward  her  from 
the  remotest  past ;  but  there  is  no 
ending.  From  the  summit  of  to 
day  the  shining  hills  of  to-morrow 
are  always  visible ;  and  though  she 
rests  here  for  the  night,  her  thoughts 
are  always  there.  She  works  and 
strives  and  suffers  and  wears  the 
flower  of  joy  in  this  present  hour; 
but,  however  intent  she  may  be  on 
service  or  sacrifice  or  happiness,  there 
is  always  a  look  in  her  eyes  as  of 
something  still  dreamed  of  even  in 
the  busiest  or  the  darkest  hour. 
So  Love  travels  through  life  with 
busy  hands  and  a  full  heart,  but  with 
an  eager  glance  forward ;  content 
whatever  comes  her  way,  and  self- 
forgetful  whatever  fortune  befalls 
her,  but  never  satisfied. 

This  eager  expectation,  often  dis- 
187 


The  Great  Word 

appointed  but  never  surrendered,  has 
its  roots  in  the  immortality  of  Love 
and  is  the  manifestation  of  her  ma 
gical  power  of  growth  ;  she  witnesses 
to  another  and  a  diviner  order  of 
being.  She  never  sees  what  she 
possesses  apart  from  what  it  must 
grow  to  ;  she  is  not  blind  to  its  limi 
tations,  but  she  is  always  aware  of 
what  it  may  become ;  and  to  her 
prophetic  heart  what  it  may  be  it 
already  is.  With  Love  there  is  no 
present ;  so  eager  is  she  for  the  best 
in  those  to  whom  she  gives  herself 
that  she  always  forestalls  them  and 
stands  beside  them  with  radiant  eyes 
far  down  the  path  on  which  they  are 
moving  with  slow  and  halting  steps. 
Those  who  hear  her  words  and  know 
her  devotion  sometimes  find  them 
exaggerated  and  even  inexplicable, 
and  go  about  saying  that  she  is 
1 88 


The  Expectation  of  Love 

blind.  She  sees  all  that  they  see, 
but  she  sees  also  what  does  not  lie 
within  their  vision,  the  man  that  is 
to  be.  Love  gives  herself,  not  to 
that  which  is  achieved,  but  to  that 
which  is  possible.  When  others 
surrender  hope,  she  lights  it  with 
fresh  sacrifice ;  when  all  seems  lost, 
she  sits  clad  with  loneliness  as  with 
a  garment,  but  with  expectation  still 
lighting  the  darkness  of  the  hour. 
Because  she  gives  herself  to  the 
highest  and  demands  the  highest, 
she  believes  in  the  highest.  Here 
is  the  secret  of  her  healing  and  lift 
ing  power :  the  silent,  steadfast,  in 
vincible  appeal  of  her  faith.  How 
often  has  it  happened  that,  when 
all  other  appeals  went  for  naught, 
her  appeal  reached,  roused,  and  re 
deemed,  for  to  the  weak  and  untrue 
that  look  in  her  eyes  is  like  the  light 


The  Great  Word 

of  God ;  searching,   smiling,   reveal 
ing,  purifying. 

In  all  the  ways  of  life,  where  cheap 
cynicisms,  arid  doubts,  cowardly  max 
ims  of  prudence,  are  accepted  as  wis 
dom,  this  figure  alone  bears  the 
knowledge  of  life  in  her  heart.  Bit 
ter  indeed  has  been  the  draught  of 
the  cup  of  evil  held  to  her  lips  by 
those  whom  she  has  followed  with 
steadfast  feet  into  the  lowest  hells ; 
but  for  her  there  is  no  hell  save  that 
which  cleanses.  Beside  what  men 
call  the  lost  soul  she  waits  with  ex 
pectation  in  her  eyes ;  for  through 
clouds  and  darkness  she  sees  her 
own  spirit  enthroned  and  invincible. 
Pierced,  scorned,  and  rejected,  she 
lifts  her  eyes,  and  the  vision  always 
meets  her  expectation.  Among  the 
blind,  the  dumb,  the  false,  she  alone 
sees  and  knows  ;  for  she  alone  dis- 
190 


The  Expectation  of  Love 

cerns  the  infinite  resources  of  life, 
she  alone  has  that  power  of  sacrifice 
which  wins  against  all  odds  because 
no  man  can  finally  shut  the  door  in 
its  face ;  she  alone  is  wise  because 
she  alone  is  pure. 


191 


CHAPTER   XXI 

THE   HIGHEST   SERVICE    OF  LOVE1 

A  FTER  all  that  has  been  said  in 
so  many  forms  of  speech,  love 
remains  unexplained  and  unfathom 
able  ;  we  know  its  manifestations,  its 
modes  of  expression,  its  surrenders 
and  sacrifices,  but  the  heart  of  it  we 
do  not  know ;  if  we  could  penetrate 
this  mystery,  we  should  understand 
God.  The  mystery  of  God,  which 
lies  like  a  luminous  cloud  about  us, 
would  be  revealed  if  it  were  possible 
to  analyse  and  probe  to  the  bottom 
any  pure  human  love. 

Wherever  love  is,  there  dwells  the 
mystery  of  God  ;  mysterious  because 

1  Reprinted  from  "  Works  and  Days." 
192 


The  Highest  Service  of  Love 

it  is  too  sacred  for  the  searching  of 
thought  alone,  and  too  vast  for  the 
capacity  of  present  experience.  The 
touch  of  the  infinite  is  upon  it,  and 
it  shares  the  boundlessness  of  the  in 
finite;  for  no  time  is  set  for  its  dur 
ation,  and  no  limits  for  its  growth. 
Age,  pain,  weariness,  sorrow,  denial, 
do  not  weaken  it ;  and  it  faces  death 
with  sublime  indifference. 

There  is  an  instinct  in  the  soul  of 
love  which  knows  that  it  is  immortal. 
There  come  to  it  at  times  the  pre 
monitions  of  eternity  ;  it  cries  out  for 
infinite  capacity  and  limitless  time. 
No  language  is  adequate  to  bear  the 
burden  of  its  expression  or  to  reveal 
the  glory  of  its  pure  and  passionate 
craving  to  serve,  to  give,  to  surren 
der,  to  be  and  to  do  for  the  child,  the 
wife,  or  the  friend  to  whom  it  goes  out 
in  a  silent,  unreturning  tide.  After  it 
13  193 


The  Great  Word 

has  said  everything,  it  retreats  baffled 
and  helpless  because  it  has  left  every 
thing  unsaid.  Its  constant  pain  is  the 
burden  of  unexpressed  feeling.  Try 
as  it  may  every  form  of  speech  known 
to  men,  in  its  heart  of  hearts  there 
remains  the  consciousness  that  the 
deepest  and  truest  things  have  not 
been  said.  The  heart  of  man  has 
overflowed  in  song,  in  art,  in  noble 
devotions  of  word  and  deed,  but  the 
heart  of  man  is  still  an  unplumbed 
sea.  If  love  were  mortal,  it  could 
find  a  voice  sweet  enough  and  of  ade 
quate  compass  to  convey  that  which 
lies  in  the  depths  of  its  being;  but 
how  shall  the  immortal  put  on  mor 
tality  ?  When  the  Infinite,  twenty 
centuries  ago,  put  on  the  finite,  and 
the  immortal  wore  the  garments  of 
the  mortal,  the  divine  was  compelled 
to  hold  back  the  most  glorious  part 
194 


The  Highest  Service  of  Love 

of  its  nature  because  there  was  no 
language  among  men  fine  enough  for 
its  purity  or  capacious  enough  for  its 
vastness.  Christ  was  not  only  the 
revelation  but  the  veiling  of  the 
Father.  If  love  were  finite,  it  would 
not  bear  for  ever  in  its  heart  a  deep 
sense  of  helplessness  ;  it  is  ready  to 
give  all,  do  all,  save  all,  but  it  can 
give  only  a  cup  of  water  where  it  would 
open  a  fountain,  and  plead  and  pray 
where  it  would  gladly  lay  down  its  life. 
The  pain  of  love  is  rooted  in  its 
immortality. 

And  as  its  pain  of  unexpressed 
feeling  and  devotion  is  rooted  in  its 
immortality,  so  also  is  its  divinest 
revelation  of  itself.  For  the  highest  i 
service  of  love  is  not  to  console  but  to 
inspire,  not  to  comfort  but  to  stimu 
late.  In  the  wreckage  of  hopes  which 
sometimes  overtakes  the  strongest 
'95 


The  Great  Word 

and  the  best,  love  alone  finds  a  hear 
ing,  and  brings  that  sense  of  com 
panionship  which  is  the  beginning 
of  consolation.  Wherever  darkness 
settles,  there  shines  the  light  of  love  ; 
and  when  the  smitten  arise  out  of 
the  prostration  of  grief,  it  is  the  lead 
ing  of  this  light  which  they  follow 
with  steps  that  grow  stronger  as 
they  struggle  on.  The  sorrow  of  the 
world  has  always  sought  the  heart  of 
love  as  its  only  place  of  hope. 

But  love  has  a  higher  ministry  ; 
its  glory  is  not  in  service  in  hours  of 
disaster,  but  in  its  noble  compulsion 
to  do  and  to  seek  the  best.  He 
loves  best  who  demands  and  secures 
the  highest  from  the  loved  one. 
The  mother  loves  her  child  most 
divinely,  not  when  she  surrounds  him 
with  comfort  and  anticipates  his  wants, 
but  when  she  resolutely  holds  him  to 
196 


The  Highest  Service  of  Love 

the  highest  standards  and  is  content 
with  nothing  less  than  his  best.  The 
immortality  of  love  shines  in  a  home, 
not  when  blindness  shuts  the  eyes  of 
the  mother  and  wife,  but  when  the 
clear-sightedness  of  her  love  reveals 
itself  in  the  greatness  of  her  demands 
and  expectations.  It  is  a  fable  that 
love  is  blind:  passion  is  often  blind/ 
but  love  never.  They  who  love  are 
sometimes  blind  to  the  faults  of  those 
for  whom  they  care,  but  not  because 
they  love  them.  When  love  has  its 
way,  it  grows  more  clear-sighted  as  it 
becomes  deeper  and  purer.  Happy 
is  the  child  to  whom  the  love  of  a 
mother  is  a  noble  stimulus,  and  for 
tunate  the  man  whose  wife  stands  not 
for  his  self-satisfaction  but  for  his 
aspiration,  —  a  visible  witness  to  the 
reality  of  his  ideal,  and  unflinchingly 
loyal  not  only  to  him  but  to  it, 
197 


The  Great  Word 

For  love,  being  immortal,  cannot 
rest  in  anything  less  than  the  im 
mortal  in  another  ;  it  craves  perfec 
tion  because  perfection  is  the  sign  of 
imperishableness  ;  men  gather  up  and 
carry  the  perfect  things  from  century 
to  century  because  these  beautiful 
finalities  of  character,  of  speech,  of 
art,  of  action,  confirm  its  hope  of 
immortality.  He  who  truly  loves  is 
irreconcilable  to  faults  in  one  whom 
he  loves ;  they  blur  the  vision  which 
always  lies  in  his  soul,  and  in  the 
beauty  of  which  his  heart  finds  undy 
ing  freshness  of  devotion  and  joy  of 
anticipation. 

The  wisdom  of  love,  which  is 
wise  in  exact  proportion  to  its  depth 
and  self-realisation,  is  shown  in  its 
exactions  rather  than  in  its  indul 
gences.  The  ministry  of  consolation 
is  divinely  appointed,  and  love  knows 
198 


The  Highest  Service  of  Love 

all  its  potencies ;  but  love  also  knows 
that  nothing  is  ever  really  lost  in 
this  world  except  opportunity ;  all 
other  losses,  however  bitter,  are  for 
the  moment.  With  this  wisdom  in 
its  heart,  love  knows  that  it  saves 
most  when  it  saves  life  for  those 
whom  it  loves;  for  life  is  not  simple 
existence  ;  it  is  growth,  and  the  things 
which  come  with  growth.  He  loves 
me  most  who  helps  me  to  do  and  to 
be  the  best  and  the  greatest  in  any 
human  relation,  not  he  who  says  the 
most  comforting  things  to  me  when 
death  has  interrupted  that  relation. 
That  fellowship,  if  it  was  true,  will 
survive  the  touch  of  death ;  but  if  I 
have  missed  the  heart  of  it  by  accept 
ing  something  less  than  the  best  it 
had  to  offer,  who  shall  call  back  the 
vanished  years  and  restore  the  lost  op 
portunity  ?  I  part  from  my  friends, 
199 


The  Great  Word 

but  I  do  not  lose  them  ;  what  I  lose 
is  the  growth,  the  unfolding,  the  task, 
the  vision,  the  chance  of  love  in  this 
present  hour. 

"  Send  some  one,  Lord,  to  love 
the  best  that  is  in  me,  and  to  accept 
nothing  less  from  me  ;  to  touch  me 
with  the  searching  tenderness  of  the 
passion  for  the  ideal  ;  to  demand 
everything  from  me  for  my  own 
sake ;  to  give  me  so  much  that  I 
cannot  think  of  myself,  and  to  ask  so 
much  that  I  can  keep  nothing  back ; 
to  console  me  by  making  me  strong 
before  sorrow  comes ;  to  help  me  so 
to  live  that,  while  I  part  with  many 
things  by  the  way,  I  lose  nothing  of 
the  gift  of  life." 


200 


14  DAY  USE 

RETURN  TO  DESK  FROM  WHICH  BORROWED 

LOAN  DEPT. 


This  book  is  due  on  the  last  date  stamped  below,  or 

on  the  date  to  which  renewed. 
Renewed  books  are  subject  to  immediate  recall. 


*HMT3* 


LD  21A-60m-3,'65 
(F2336slO)476B 


General  Library 

University  of  California 

Berkeley 


YC189759 


